Mystydjinn
[Insert rimshot]
Through a lonely window, the moons Tus and Aestus spilt their light, illuminating the foreboding hallway with a pale lavender and creamy white glow. Soaking up the lunar shower was a small creature, born of ambient vise, eyeing its prey from afar hiding on a windowsill; the pile of golden wafers of love a certain redheaded, odd-eyed spurii was drawing into her bosom.
Little did it know its greed would lead him to be a part of something greater. Indeed, as the nuisance crouched in its perch, tiny insectoid wings lifting as they prepared for flight, things were stirring within the unseen realm.
Unawares was the spurii about to be robbed; and she shifted the coins all that more alluringly to the spirit as they clinked, and jingled, catching the candlelight with their tiny reflective surfaces while their owner teased her victims. “What’s wrong, you big strong men can’t take down a little girl?” She was sitting back up now as she slid the exa into her clothes now, allowing one sparkling piece managed to find its way into her chest, wedged between the coarse red fabric covering her breast, making them an obstacle for the fae.
The guards she was antagonizing had been playing her for two weeks now; and each day the poor suckers kept getting poorer, and she kept getting richer. At one point, they suggested the cards were rigged and left in a huff, only to return the next day and lose everything all over again. It did not help that Aelf was a sore winner, and gloated shamelessly over every game no matter what they played.
“I still say the bastard’s cheatin us somehow,” the eldest and portliest guard griped. His large hands making the cards flow like water between dirty, calloused-littered fingers. He was the one who initially started playing with her, it started as a challenge from her while he played against Janiya across the hallway, and after an hour of her jeering, she beat him and her in short order. Legarum was a game she played well, her tutors in a past life had made sure of that.
“You know good and well she couldn’t have Brutus, where in the world would she hide the cards?” Janiya scolded the man. The blue and green feathers covering her left eye shifting slightly, on the ‘stocky’ enlil, as she did so. Her halberd sat close to her thigh on her right side, making her the most cautious of the group, card games or not, these folk were dangerous.
“Well you can’t be too sure, Janiya, she might be pullin’ the wool over our eyes,” the towering velen chuckled. “I mean James did say she knocked him out last week and chucked his spear.” He turned his head to look back at the guard in question as he sat perched in his chair a little ways down, making his ‘locks’ shift over his shoulder. “Isn’t that right James?”
James was the poor family man Aelf had terrorized last week. “Kick rocks Aron, I wasn’t drunk that day!” The laicar insisted, glaring at the spurii and her winnings. “That bastard assaulted me!” As you could probably tell, he was a little sore over the other guards teasing him so. He was a very sensitive soul, and did not take kindly to taking a beating while he slept, as was obvious in his death glare at the odd-eyed woman.
Aelf snickered as she watched the four bicker and tease the poor man, the sight unearthing memories of Blue house. She did not respond to the accusation, knowing it to be true, and instead watched Brutus deal cards again, sliding each into her hand as they hit the table. They were playing with traditional rules as usual, though their own house combs made a hierarchy of numbers. Starting with the zero gates, and moving up number wise and through the faults, favors, and gifts, with the Vis being top. Several wins were possible by making runs with combinations of the five aspects of the realms, between realms, with the longest run being considered supreme. So a run with a zero gate all the way to the Vis was ideal though near impossible.
Brutus was dealing because James refused to come near the redhead, for fear of being attacked again, forcing Brutus into the awkwardness of acting as dealer while he played, not that he minded though. The large burly man was a god when it came to handling the tiny pieces of cardstock, and had worked as a card jockey and bouncer in the job before this one. James sat and watched them from his seat.
“One, two, three, four...” She tapped the table to get the man’s attention; he had missed her last deal. “And five.” The sword, Bell’s wrath, the hidden eye, the stranger, and the poet, well ain’t that a bitch. No gates... Not a very good hand to say the least, but ironically it was fitting; her story was laid out in the cards in her hand. She was once a scholar and poet when she grew up in a dead end town, and was watched by a hidden eye, that of her mothers. Then after her trauma, she took up the sword and adopted Bell’s wrath, only to become a stranger in the world and to herself. The redhead shook her head and looked about the table; thinking about herself would not do if she were to win the game. The others were still there glancing through their cards and organizing them, thankfully not seeing the pained expression that had crossed her face, so she adopted her mask and tapped the table to draw.
As Brutus went and set his cards down to scoop up the deck, Aelflead dropped the poet. The card she received was the first gold gate. The deck was passed around the table, each drawing and discarding their cards.
The slight twitches in their faces as they drew made her curious as to if they were having the same problem she had had at the start. However, as the deck came round again she willed her own face into obedience, and drew; she had to focus now. She dropped the eye this time, and drew the second sword, then shifted her hand to order them.
Her hand now read, the first Castus gate, wrath one, the stranger two, swords one, the second. She had the makings of a run in her hand, but it was holey. She mentally frowned while she waited for the deck to come back around to her. She slid the cards between long cocoa fingers as they began to grow strangely warm in her hand, and pondered her next discard. She knew she would have to drop the gate or the fault, though if she dropped the gate there would be no chance for a run if she could not draw Bell’s second, and no gate. On the other hand, if she dropped the fault there was less risk, but that meant making her hand holier than before if she did not draw what she needed.
The deck had come back around though, and the time for second-guessing was over. She slid the fault from her hand, held it up with its face to the table, and let Brutus take it from her. As she raised her hand towards the deck to draw something caught her eye.
There printed on an ivory colored background with gold colored lining was the flaming red portal to infernalis. The second red gate. Her mask broke at her surprise and Janiya caught the break in the spurii’s wall as her black eyebrows shot up. Aelf cursed mentally for not noticing the gate on the discard pile earlier, and moved her hand to pick it up.
Now that it was nestled in her hand between the first Castus gate, and the stranger, she felt the eyes of the others on her as they all came to realize what hand she was trying for. However, it was just the first round, and there was no reason to panic, there was no way that the game would end that quickly. Brutus set his hand face down on the table and set down the deck to reach for the first card to flip.
Aelflead was now more confident in her hand but even she knew the game was unlikely to end that quickly, and now that she had revealed her hand with the break in her mask, the game was going to be that much harder. She picked up two crosses from her pile and tossed it onto the table, and they made tinkling sounds, and cast firelight across the hall as they bounced on the wood, one of their beams revealing a black streak that decided now would be a good time.
The flash of black made James jump off his seat in surprise and fall unceremoniously to the floor, while the velen Aron yelled in surprise and threw his hands up into the air, sending his cards raining down around the room along with Janiya’s as his flailing knocked her cards out of her hand and onto the floor. Brutus screamed shrilly, a strange and unnatural sound to be coming out of such a big man and knocked the cards that were hidden on the floor to the ground, and the deck on the floor as well, along with the one candle in the room, snuffing it.
Now as the room was plunged into darkness, the small flash that had started the whole mess went flitting and darting around the room wildly as he tried to avoid the flailing arms of the other inhabitants, a difficult task despite his ability to see through the shadows. Aelflead was ducking to avoid blows blindly as well, but finally responded with a surprised and relatively shrill “Yahh!” When the shade managed to find its way to his original prize.
Its miniscule frame of no larger than a fist crashed into the redhead’s breasts spread-eagled, and roughly dug between them, fishing out his shiny reward in the span of seconds, before he was abruptly flung off, and flittered away. His glinting prize in hand, he considered today a victory, and damn anybody else who thought otherwise.
The violated Aelflead flung the fae from her breast in a wild thrashing, an episode brought on from the brusque and unwarranted contact. In her body’s remembered rage, she swung out in the dark, now bound in the hell that was inside her mind.
The dimly lit room was blinding to the poor girl’s eyes, she had not seen much past the film of slime that had coated her face for the past two mornings. That was not important now, what was important was getting free of this place, and as her shackles crashed into the fifth terran’s face, that was the only thing on the girl’s mind.
One man fell, his jawbone shattered under the rage of her fists; the next man’s foot crushed and flung into the first. On her turn from the throw, a velen woman groped her, trying to restrain the redheaded child; instead, her hands were broken, and shoulders dislocated as she was flung across the room. Her ribcage was shattered when she hit the wall.
The girl turned instinctively and ran, ran down the hall, fleeing through the drug-haze that filled up the room. She had to find the exit and soon, or soon she would fall again deep into its depths. Two men and women, enlil and laicar stepped in her way, sober scowls and sneers their faces. These were security, meant to keep the slaves in.
She met these demons with both of her feet; slime flying everywhere as sailed through the air, her rage and fear powering every flex. The slickness on her feet kept the blow from sticking, but it also saved her. The groping fingers of the laicar that stood guard slid right off her slime covered cocoa skin, sending her crashing into the floor. She slid for a moment, so close to the door but there was too much rage in her form.
The four of them advanced closing in on her and she rose up to strike at them all. Her bare form was a weapon, cutting like a blade as she tore into the four. An enlil lost his right talon as the girl broke it off, lashing out at newcomers. Living weapon in hand she crippled and killed with every blow; striking down walls before her like the hand of a god. When she finished, they were no more than bloodstains, and raggedly breathing, crumpled bodies against that up against the wall as she-.
“Wake up kid; are you done in there yet?”
The real world now snapped back into focus. She found herself whole, the only red on her, was the red of her hair. Contrary to the brothel that her old mother ran, she was standing at door, the exit of the prison, wearing her cloak, leather pants, and tunic, with boots on her feet, and exa in pocket. She could hear the tinkling of glass and raspy breathing behind her, but beyond that, she did not intend to see the destruction she had wrought.
As she strode out into the cold Terminus air, she felt herself being watched. Nothing normal, not foe or enemy, but certainly this... thing, it was not a friend. She reached for her holster and found no weapon there, not truly expecting to have it for so long, but she cursed anyway took off into an alley. She decided she would need a weapon soon, preferably a blade of some sort to defend herself with, when she tripped over one.
A long brown handled dagger, rusted partly on the hilt but easily fixable, though this was not occupying her eyes. What caught her attention now was the lithe figure of another woman clad in a cloak, not dissimilar to her own, but of nicer quality, and rippling irregularly in some unseen wind, fading away like smoke in a tunnel into the distance. Her whole face was hidden except for her mouth, revealing sandy brown skin, and pink lips, similar to that of her mother’s.
Aelf watched the figure warily as reached out a hand, even this was hidden completely in fabric, though green feathers poked out from between the girl’s bandages. “Who are you?” The fugitive said to the strange spurii.
“No one of importance, who is it that you presume to be?” The woman’s tone was even, and patient, as though she was talking to a child. Her body language denoted as such, leaned forward slightly with her hands placed together right below her chin. “And we can skip the lie child; I know that’s not your name, Gwendolyn Kyritsis.” She shook her shoulders slightly as if she were having a silent laugh.
The speaking of her old name brought back a flood of old memories that hit her like a slap in the face, but her expression belayed none of her surprise. “If you already know then why did you ask? It seems kind of redundant to me,” came the redhead’s reply. “Don’t you have something better to do?” She asked, “Besides stalking little girls I mean.” The mercenary’s reply was flippant and hid the girl’s fear. She had just woken from an episode and did not know why she was there. All she wanted to do was go sleep, sleep away the night and try to forget all over again.
“Oh, don’t be like that child.” The woman pouted, dropping her hands into a pleading gesture, “I know the dream was scary but you can’t go back to sleep just yet, I’ve got some questions to ask you.”
Aelflead froze. The wo-creature grinned.
“How did yo-?”
The creature raised her hands to the sky as it spoke, waving them around like sports announcer. “Know what it was you were going through? Honey, I’m the god of illusions, why wouldn’t I know about self-made ones?” She stood there and posed with hands open in the air, a questioning and challenging stance; a grin sat plastered on her face as she ‘looked’ at the spurii, the feathers on her arm changing scales.
“Occultus?”
“Sure, the one and only.”
[2733]
Little did it know its greed would lead him to be a part of something greater. Indeed, as the nuisance crouched in its perch, tiny insectoid wings lifting as they prepared for flight, things were stirring within the unseen realm.
Unawares was the spurii about to be robbed; and she shifted the coins all that more alluringly to the spirit as they clinked, and jingled, catching the candlelight with their tiny reflective surfaces while their owner teased her victims. “What’s wrong, you big strong men can’t take down a little girl?” She was sitting back up now as she slid the exa into her clothes now, allowing one sparkling piece managed to find its way into her chest, wedged between the coarse red fabric covering her breast, making them an obstacle for the fae.
The guards she was antagonizing had been playing her for two weeks now; and each day the poor suckers kept getting poorer, and she kept getting richer. At one point, they suggested the cards were rigged and left in a huff, only to return the next day and lose everything all over again. It did not help that Aelf was a sore winner, and gloated shamelessly over every game no matter what they played.
“I still say the bastard’s cheatin us somehow,” the eldest and portliest guard griped. His large hands making the cards flow like water between dirty, calloused-littered fingers. He was the one who initially started playing with her, it started as a challenge from her while he played against Janiya across the hallway, and after an hour of her jeering, she beat him and her in short order. Legarum was a game she played well, her tutors in a past life had made sure of that.
“You know good and well she couldn’t have Brutus, where in the world would she hide the cards?” Janiya scolded the man. The blue and green feathers covering her left eye shifting slightly, on the ‘stocky’ enlil, as she did so. Her halberd sat close to her thigh on her right side, making her the most cautious of the group, card games or not, these folk were dangerous.
“Well you can’t be too sure, Janiya, she might be pullin’ the wool over our eyes,” the towering velen chuckled. “I mean James did say she knocked him out last week and chucked his spear.” He turned his head to look back at the guard in question as he sat perched in his chair a little ways down, making his ‘locks’ shift over his shoulder. “Isn’t that right James?”
James was the poor family man Aelf had terrorized last week. “Kick rocks Aron, I wasn’t drunk that day!” The laicar insisted, glaring at the spurii and her winnings. “That bastard assaulted me!” As you could probably tell, he was a little sore over the other guards teasing him so. He was a very sensitive soul, and did not take kindly to taking a beating while he slept, as was obvious in his death glare at the odd-eyed woman.
Aelf snickered as she watched the four bicker and tease the poor man, the sight unearthing memories of Blue house. She did not respond to the accusation, knowing it to be true, and instead watched Brutus deal cards again, sliding each into her hand as they hit the table. They were playing with traditional rules as usual, though their own house combs made a hierarchy of numbers. Starting with the zero gates, and moving up number wise and through the faults, favors, and gifts, with the Vis being top. Several wins were possible by making runs with combinations of the five aspects of the realms, between realms, with the longest run being considered supreme. So a run with a zero gate all the way to the Vis was ideal though near impossible.
Brutus was dealing because James refused to come near the redhead, for fear of being attacked again, forcing Brutus into the awkwardness of acting as dealer while he played, not that he minded though. The large burly man was a god when it came to handling the tiny pieces of cardstock, and had worked as a card jockey and bouncer in the job before this one. James sat and watched them from his seat.
“One, two, three, four...” She tapped the table to get the man’s attention; he had missed her last deal. “And five.” The sword, Bell’s wrath, the hidden eye, the stranger, and the poet, well ain’t that a bitch. No gates... Not a very good hand to say the least, but ironically it was fitting; her story was laid out in the cards in her hand. She was once a scholar and poet when she grew up in a dead end town, and was watched by a hidden eye, that of her mothers. Then after her trauma, she took up the sword and adopted Bell’s wrath, only to become a stranger in the world and to herself. The redhead shook her head and looked about the table; thinking about herself would not do if she were to win the game. The others were still there glancing through their cards and organizing them, thankfully not seeing the pained expression that had crossed her face, so she adopted her mask and tapped the table to draw.
As Brutus went and set his cards down to scoop up the deck, Aelflead dropped the poet. The card she received was the first gold gate. The deck was passed around the table, each drawing and discarding their cards.
The slight twitches in their faces as they drew made her curious as to if they were having the same problem she had had at the start. However, as the deck came round again she willed her own face into obedience, and drew; she had to focus now. She dropped the eye this time, and drew the second sword, then shifted her hand to order them.
Her hand now read, the first Castus gate, wrath one, the stranger two, swords one, the second. She had the makings of a run in her hand, but it was holey. She mentally frowned while she waited for the deck to come back around to her. She slid the cards between long cocoa fingers as they began to grow strangely warm in her hand, and pondered her next discard. She knew she would have to drop the gate or the fault, though if she dropped the gate there would be no chance for a run if she could not draw Bell’s second, and no gate. On the other hand, if she dropped the fault there was less risk, but that meant making her hand holier than before if she did not draw what she needed.
The deck had come back around though, and the time for second-guessing was over. She slid the fault from her hand, held it up with its face to the table, and let Brutus take it from her. As she raised her hand towards the deck to draw something caught her eye.
There printed on an ivory colored background with gold colored lining was the flaming red portal to infernalis. The second red gate. Her mask broke at her surprise and Janiya caught the break in the spurii’s wall as her black eyebrows shot up. Aelf cursed mentally for not noticing the gate on the discard pile earlier, and moved her hand to pick it up.
Now that it was nestled in her hand between the first Castus gate, and the stranger, she felt the eyes of the others on her as they all came to realize what hand she was trying for. However, it was just the first round, and there was no reason to panic, there was no way that the game would end that quickly. Brutus set his hand face down on the table and set down the deck to reach for the first card to flip.
Aelflead was now more confident in her hand but even she knew the game was unlikely to end that quickly, and now that she had revealed her hand with the break in her mask, the game was going to be that much harder. She picked up two crosses from her pile and tossed it onto the table, and they made tinkling sounds, and cast firelight across the hall as they bounced on the wood, one of their beams revealing a black streak that decided now would be a good time.
The flash of black made James jump off his seat in surprise and fall unceremoniously to the floor, while the velen Aron yelled in surprise and threw his hands up into the air, sending his cards raining down around the room along with Janiya’s as his flailing knocked her cards out of her hand and onto the floor. Brutus screamed shrilly, a strange and unnatural sound to be coming out of such a big man and knocked the cards that were hidden on the floor to the ground, and the deck on the floor as well, along with the one candle in the room, snuffing it.
Now as the room was plunged into darkness, the small flash that had started the whole mess went flitting and darting around the room wildly as he tried to avoid the flailing arms of the other inhabitants, a difficult task despite his ability to see through the shadows. Aelflead was ducking to avoid blows blindly as well, but finally responded with a surprised and relatively shrill “Yahh!” When the shade managed to find its way to his original prize.
Its miniscule frame of no larger than a fist crashed into the redhead’s breasts spread-eagled, and roughly dug between them, fishing out his shiny reward in the span of seconds, before he was abruptly flung off, and flittered away. His glinting prize in hand, he considered today a victory, and damn anybody else who thought otherwise.
The violated Aelflead flung the fae from her breast in a wild thrashing, an episode brought on from the brusque and unwarranted contact. In her body’s remembered rage, she swung out in the dark, now bound in the hell that was inside her mind.
The dimly lit room was blinding to the poor girl’s eyes, she had not seen much past the film of slime that had coated her face for the past two mornings. That was not important now, what was important was getting free of this place, and as her shackles crashed into the fifth terran’s face, that was the only thing on the girl’s mind.
One man fell, his jawbone shattered under the rage of her fists; the next man’s foot crushed and flung into the first. On her turn from the throw, a velen woman groped her, trying to restrain the redheaded child; instead, her hands were broken, and shoulders dislocated as she was flung across the room. Her ribcage was shattered when she hit the wall.
The girl turned instinctively and ran, ran down the hall, fleeing through the drug-haze that filled up the room. She had to find the exit and soon, or soon she would fall again deep into its depths. Two men and women, enlil and laicar stepped in her way, sober scowls and sneers their faces. These were security, meant to keep the slaves in.
She met these demons with both of her feet; slime flying everywhere as sailed through the air, her rage and fear powering every flex. The slickness on her feet kept the blow from sticking, but it also saved her. The groping fingers of the laicar that stood guard slid right off her slime covered cocoa skin, sending her crashing into the floor. She slid for a moment, so close to the door but there was too much rage in her form.
The four of them advanced closing in on her and she rose up to strike at them all. Her bare form was a weapon, cutting like a blade as she tore into the four. An enlil lost his right talon as the girl broke it off, lashing out at newcomers. Living weapon in hand she crippled and killed with every blow; striking down walls before her like the hand of a god. When she finished, they were no more than bloodstains, and raggedly breathing, crumpled bodies against that up against the wall as she-.
“Wake up kid; are you done in there yet?”
The real world now snapped back into focus. She found herself whole, the only red on her, was the red of her hair. Contrary to the brothel that her old mother ran, she was standing at door, the exit of the prison, wearing her cloak, leather pants, and tunic, with boots on her feet, and exa in pocket. She could hear the tinkling of glass and raspy breathing behind her, but beyond that, she did not intend to see the destruction she had wrought.
As she strode out into the cold Terminus air, she felt herself being watched. Nothing normal, not foe or enemy, but certainly this... thing, it was not a friend. She reached for her holster and found no weapon there, not truly expecting to have it for so long, but she cursed anyway took off into an alley. She decided she would need a weapon soon, preferably a blade of some sort to defend herself with, when she tripped over one.
A long brown handled dagger, rusted partly on the hilt but easily fixable, though this was not occupying her eyes. What caught her attention now was the lithe figure of another woman clad in a cloak, not dissimilar to her own, but of nicer quality, and rippling irregularly in some unseen wind, fading away like smoke in a tunnel into the distance. Her whole face was hidden except for her mouth, revealing sandy brown skin, and pink lips, similar to that of her mother’s.
Aelf watched the figure warily as reached out a hand, even this was hidden completely in fabric, though green feathers poked out from between the girl’s bandages. “Who are you?” The fugitive said to the strange spurii.
“No one of importance, who is it that you presume to be?” The woman’s tone was even, and patient, as though she was talking to a child. Her body language denoted as such, leaned forward slightly with her hands placed together right below her chin. “And we can skip the lie child; I know that’s not your name, Gwendolyn Kyritsis.” She shook her shoulders slightly as if she were having a silent laugh.
The speaking of her old name brought back a flood of old memories that hit her like a slap in the face, but her expression belayed none of her surprise. “If you already know then why did you ask? It seems kind of redundant to me,” came the redhead’s reply. “Don’t you have something better to do?” She asked, “Besides stalking little girls I mean.” The mercenary’s reply was flippant and hid the girl’s fear. She had just woken from an episode and did not know why she was there. All she wanted to do was go sleep, sleep away the night and try to forget all over again.
“Oh, don’t be like that child.” The woman pouted, dropping her hands into a pleading gesture, “I know the dream was scary but you can’t go back to sleep just yet, I’ve got some questions to ask you.”
Aelflead froze. The wo-creature grinned.
“How did yo-?”
The creature raised her hands to the sky as it spoke, waving them around like sports announcer. “Know what it was you were going through? Honey, I’m the god of illusions, why wouldn’t I know about self-made ones?” She stood there and posed with hands open in the air, a questioning and challenging stance; a grin sat plastered on her face as she ‘looked’ at the spurii, the feathers on her arm changing scales.
“Occultus?”
“Sure, the one and only.”
[2733]