The hunt

[Daq Bekkar]

"Some reward," Daq muttered to himself. Then he remembered how good Zebren's hearing had proven itself to be in the past. He took the money and slid it into his pocket. Hopefully it hadn't been quite understood over the clicking and clacking of the armor being donned.

But to make sure...

"Err.." He cleared his throat, speaking up. "That's.. uh.. Some sword.. you've got there."

He turned away from the giant to hide the embarassed blushing, under the pretense of grabbing a broom from its holster on the wall and starting to sweep up glass.

"Oh and.. yeah.. The armor's safe. It should be, at least."

But maybe it wasn't. Daq doubted it, but he secretly hoped so. It would solve a lot of problems if the giant turned up dead the next morning in some back alley, skin eaten through by acids tucked away in his shinguards. But it wasnt likely.

"As for the provisions, just pick up a few extra of whatever your planning on getting."

Daq's imagination took hold, conjuring up images of the kinds of things someone like Zebren would eat. Giant spiders and raw snakes.. Pig's tails and cow eyes..

"Eh--on second thought, just tell Njord to give me the usual."

Daq went back to sweeping.

[Zebren Avern]

Zebren glowered at Daq as the comment reached his ears. "Some reward", he thought, sarcasm too. Clearly, he feels more is required. Hmm.

Outwardly, he said nothing. He was beginning to tire of this, and in any case, he was hungry. "Tell me what is involved in this "usual", Daq Bekkar.", he said, just in case Daq had different tastes in food to him. Still, meat was a fairly universal one. Aside from that "veggeitaroian"... or something... he'd met in Calhoun, long ago...

Re-donning the rest of his armour, Zebren smiled thinly as he remembered his parents, the first people to teach him how to strap a pauldron to one's own shoulder. It had come in very, very useful.

Once finished, he picked his way out, avoiding some likely-looking glass canisters of gods only knew what, and set off in the vague direction Daq had given him for the butcher's.

The street was mostly deserted, a few people still dotted around, but mostly vacated of other people. The few that were there, that saw him coming, seemed to be making very sure as not to make eye contact with him. He couldn't really figure out why, after all, he was fairly sure he could look more intimidating if he wanted to, but it was useful, anyway. Battle scars and a friendly demeanour tends to get you recognised as a hero. Battle scars and a demeanour like Zebren's tends to get you personal space.

Which is what he got. Eventually, however, he had to admit to himself that he was hopelessly lost. Conveniently, however, a middle-aged man appeared to be sweeping the road outside his house just a few yards ahead of him.

Zebren approached.

The man ran inside and bolted the door.

Why do people always DO that? he mused, scanning the area with his eyes for someone to ask for directions.

Thankfully, he managed to find a slightly younger, perhaps more naive man, sitting on a wall, smoking merrily on a pipe as he followed the seven-foot giant in deep black plate armour walk up to him. Interestingly, it was only as Zebren got close that he noticed the red glow in the eyes. By that point, it was to late to run, although he became suddenly very interested in his pipe.

"One of my men tells me there is a butcher's shop run by somebody called Njord around here, somewhere. Tell me where it is." he demanded, tone at it's most menacing. He'd found people expected it of him, somehow.

The fear was evident in the younger man's face as he rapidly scanned his mind for the answer. "I... I... " he managed to splutter, before his panic-addled brain finally spat out a reply for him, "Take the next left... three streets up! Don't hurt me!"

Zebren said nothing. He merely left the man to it and set off in the right direction.

Presently, he came across a promising looking place, given that it declared itself a butcher's shop, so he went inside.

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq knew he only had moments to spare. His directions had been sort of vague, but he figured that it still wouldn't take Zebren too long to track down the butcher shop he had picked out.

Daq had been going there for the last month, but he discovered a few days ago that the owner had disappeared suddenly. No new food was being stocked behind the counters, the safe had been cleared out, but the place had been left unlocked and still managed to maintain a clean appearance. Daq had filed this away in some part of his brain set aside for tedious or irrelevant information, but the stress of the last day's events brought it bubbling up, forcing it into relevance as Daq had second thoughts about working for the unsavory giant and grasped for means of escape.

So here he was, alone for at least forty minutes in his ruined lab. He had intended to spend the better part of this time packing equipment, but a knot in his gut told him it would be best to spend the time getting a head start. He grabbed a few distilling vials, some expensive chemicals, his antidote kit and the corpseweed, packed them as gently as he could into a knapsack and hustled out of the room.

"I'm going out to the country!!" he shouted on his way out, waking the innkeeper from her snooze. She snorted and rubbed her eyes. By then, Daq was almost out the door.

"TO LOOK FOR REAGENTS!!" he shouted. "IN THE COUNTRY!"

He walked slowly first in the direction toward the outskirts of Marn, then turned around, doubling back at a run for some refuge in the city.

[Zebren Avern]

As soon as he pushed open the door, Zebren could tell that the shop hadn't been used in some time. The stale air hit him in the face as the inch-thick dust that lay on the floor and surfaces was kicked up by it, pelting him in the face as the door swung shut behind him.

Looking around, he could see that the previous owner hadn't left in a hurry. Everything had been taken away, either by himself or thieves, except that was unlikely since the shop had clearly not been entered in a good while.

He wandered further in, taking a good lungful of the air, sniffing it, putting his talents to good use. Hunting... ah, yes.

Owing to the general air of the place, it had been deserted by humans and other sentient species alike for at least three months. Here and there the smell of rat was fairly recent, but that was to be expected, in a disused butcher's shop.

After twenty-five minutes of scanning, he stood, and left. Clearly, Daq must have known the shop was deserted. There was little point returning to the apartment, then. The little toe-rag must be long-gone by now.

The hunt was on.

He grinned fiercly at the thought, and set off in pursuit. Tracking a human, oh, the simple joys. Jeren would taste blood again soon, that was sure.

Letting out a primal bloodlust roar, loud enough to be heard for at least a mile, the red eyes hardened as the fallen Xenetian stalked his new prey.


Here I come, little human... run, if you can.

[Zebren Avern]

Hitting the streets at a predatory stalk, he focused his attentions on his memories of Daq. The smells, the way he walked, the way he spoke, et cetera. Sniffing on the wind, he tried to isolate Daq's particular scent, but the city got in the way.

Thinking rapidly, he considered the situation. Jeren did the same, the real brains behind this outfit. Bekkar is long gone by now, for certain. Return to the apartment, for you left your pack in there.

Zebren scowled as the sword's grating voice sounded in his head. Beginning to obey on habit alone, it was a few seconds before he realised that his legs were carrying him back to Daq's apartment. He sighed, calming down a little from his high-energy excitement from earlier, and settled into the walk, the building soon coming into sight.

[Zebren Avern]

Finally finding the door, he entered, ducking his head as usual, and striding right past the innkeeper without so much as a change in facial expression, which was set in a kind of rigid fury. It didn't take long to find the right door - it was the one with the Zebren-shaped hole right through it - and he stepped through, into the room beyond.

The briefest of flashes of insight crossed his mind as he stood there, eying the things Daq had left behind in his haste to flee. Sniffing gently, although not with an alchemist's nose, he was able to tell that several jars had been broken, or spilt, and the scents from a few of them seemed to trail out the door. So he had left by the standard route.

The innkeeper appeared at his elbow, shrieking something about the country and reagents. Zebren ignored her, focusing primarily on locating the pack he'd left here a short while ago.

The innkeeper became more insistent as it dawned on her that she was being ignored. Stepping close to him, she started pulling at the loose clothes under his armour, demanding attention.

A gauntleted backhand caught her in the jaw and lifted her off her feet, sending the unconscious body pinwheeling into the wall at speeds high enough to crack the plaster. As she slumped to the ground, Zebren turned to look at her, eyes blazing pure red hatred.

"Do. Not. Disturb."

[Zebren Avern]

Eventually, Zebren got bored.

He was an incalculably patient man, so this did take a while, but it happened nonetheless. After a while, the delight of repeatedly drawing his sword and poking the landlady in various places had worn off, and now he did it merely out of habit. Besides, the fun generally ran out when the blood did, and since the floor was swimming in a thin layer of it, that time had come long ago.

With a sigh, he stood up. Have we miscalculated, Jeren? Guide me...

The sword stayed quiet, it's refusal to talk to him a sign of something, more significant perhaps than anything the sentient weapon could have told him; sadly, however, this went over Zebren's head as usual. He sighed again, lighting up a cigarette he'd found on the floor outside and blowing smoke catatonically through the hole in the doorway he'd caused with his first entrance.

Remembering about that, with a smirk, he had a flash of inspiration. Alchemists... this might be entertaining..., he laughed a little, to his own private jokes, and looked around a little closer.

Obviously, the little bastard had left in a hurry, so there was plenty of stuff around to 'play' with. Plus, he thought, what a lovely way to get a little vengeance on that little shit... and so he set about mixing a few various liquids together.

Amid the sound of smashing glass and fizzing, the corridor suddenly filled with Danteri. Scattering footsteps echoed along it's length as Zebren left in a big hurry, diving for cover as the fireball threatened to catch up with him. He ducked, covered up, but just as suddenly, the fireball was gone - the corridor was chock-thick with bright orange smoke, true, but the fireball had gone.

He wandered amicably back into the alchemist's apartment using the glow from his eyes alone, put his fist through the window, and then sat down. Well, that should attract attention, he thought.

[Zebren Avern]

Zebren sat, smoking a cigarette. the white smoke danced around, bullied this way and that by the encompassing orange smoke which filled the entire room still. There had been copious amounts of whatever liquids he had mixed together to create it, and so it continued to emerge from the beakers, which had miraculously survived the fireball he had also concieved.

With a smirk, he poked the landlady's corpse with Jeren again. Shouldn't be long now, he thought.

[Xyon_of_Calhoun]

Continued from here

Xyon stepped into the room, for the first time managing to ignore the smoke as he recognised the figure crouching down in a pool of blood. Adrenaline coursed through him as the recognition flashed old memories to the surface, booted any sense of civility from his mind, and replaced it with one, simple thought.

That needs to die.

It replayed, over and over and over in his mind, continuously, as even Inohen's best attempts to break through failed. this was instinct, a born, genetic hatred. It was primal, raw, untamed, and uncontrollable. And it threatened to consume him.

Only his sense of duty kept him away from it. The red light from Zebren's eyes caught in his plate armour and reflected it into his eyes, which at this point were brilliant green, where it stuck. I am a guardsman.

He remembered. It played in his mind, over, endlessly as the other did too. they fought, a small war flashing around in his head whilst basic instinct moved him one step to the left, avoiding the Danteri's charge. As Zebren stumbled past, Xyon drove his knee into the giant's gut, and delivered an elbow to the back of his head. Sadly, it didn't manage to render him unconscious, but it sent him sprawling to the floor, where he slid for a while on all the blood and smacked his head on the wall, which at the very least hurt a bit.

He smiled, then smiled even wider as he spoke the words again, for the first time in over twenty years.

"Zebren Avern. You are under arrest."

[Pagusel]

(continued from The Fix)

Pagusel’s expression lifted visibly with the lightness Daq had applied to his characterization of the situation: “The lab is going to explode.” It was a grim idea, but a darkly humorous way to put it. Pagusel didn’t smile with mirth or appreciation of the joke, however.

There was something else to what Daq had said—an edge to his voice indicating his impatience, perhaps his unwillingness to address Pagusel in a reasonable manner—that had taken the weight off the lady’s countenance. Her eyebrows lifted, her gaze floated upward along the column of smoke, the origin of which Daq had been more comfortable chanting at empty air than mentioning to her. Her mouth slackened into a gently downturned line that nevertheless had an airier look to it than a firm smile.

Daq seemed to roll along more comfortably than before. Pagusel easily kept up with him on the flatter ground they came to just before the gates. Her strides became longer as his became faster, but she applied none of his urgency to her gait. They passed the wall at nearly the same time.

Inside the city the topography of the situation changed. The billow of smoke became much easier to clearly associate with a quadrant of the city, even a specific building, with the angles of architecture now looming in the foreground. Pagusel paused on the road and looked back at the gates before she continued on after Daq.

" . . . many things you don't understand . . ."

“I understand,” she said after him, not very loudly, “all of what you have told me, Mister Bekkar. The situation as you have characterized it is not unclear to me.” Pagusel paused as she sidestepped a disembodied wagon wheel leaning into the road. “I can only understand what information I am given, and as I am not a psychic, this is not due to a failure of my mental capacity.”

Pagusel rolled her eyes in the direction of the smoke that was growing ever closer as they walked quickly. “If you don’t tell me what you expect of me, I can’t fulfill it,” she said with a briskness to her breath that was not reflected in the soft detachment of her tone.

[Thelonius Gant]

By the time he finally reached the lab Gant had fallen to the back of the group, although it may have been worth noting that not only did he not appear to be he slightest bit out of breath but he had also somehow managed to roll himself a cigarette in the middle of the mad dash. Gant liked to think that if he needed to he could have outrun Xyon, although his legs weren't so certain about that, but the fact was he really didn't need to.

Gant remember his father telling him once that "There is no greater glory than to follow". At the time Gant didn't' quite understand this merits of such a viewpoint, perhaps because the rest of the time his father tending to dwell on how leadership should be the goal and ambition of all men, but after witnessing first hand what actually happened to people who led he quickly warmed up to this idea. It never really occurred to Gant that his father had meant to promote loyalty, honour and duty by saying such things but even if it had Gant would have liked his version better.
"Why lead when you can follow?"

Xyon launched himself through the door of the building with all the enthusiasm and apparent disregards for his own safety and basic logic that Gant had come to expect. What Gant hadn't expected was for the guardsmen who had fallen into their group to run in after him without so much as a moments hesitation. It wouldn't have been cowardice, Gant reflected he lingered in front of doorway, because if orange smoke didn't deserve some brief consideration then there wasn't much in this world that did...

However, brief consideration was all it got from Gant and after a few moments he entered the building.

It really wasn't much comfort to Gant that his crazy, off the wall murderous red eyed giant theory had turned out to be correct as the reward for this shrewd detective work was the said murderous red eyed giant. It also didn't help that the room was filled with smoke and although it didn't completely obscure his sight was enough to make him worried when he heard the words "Swords,lads". Gant barely trusted himself with a sword and so trusting half a dozen guardsmen in a cramped smoky room was a somewhat daunting prospect.

However, there was a job to be done and so Gant did the only thing he could.

"Forget that..." Thelonius muttered to himself as he turned on his heel and scampered back out onto the street.

Because at the end of the day if five guardsmen couldn't get the job done what difference would a sixth make?

It was like what Gant always said
"Why follow?"

[Daq Bekkar]

Daq's face colored at Pagusel's words, though her near-deadpan hinted neither at her trust nor her admonishment. With the drugs of the past days haunting the liminal spaces between his judgment and actions, his next decision would hardly be a decision. He'd done it many times in the past. It had become a reflex almost. An instinct. A compulsion. Certainly a habit.

He'd learned gradually that it wouldn't do, but his lesson, like the pain of his injuries, was forgotten.. or at least inaccessible. Thoughts of past acquaintances filtered lazily through his head, but with the familiar sorrow of memory came little of the equally familiar understanding he'd come to expect. Unavailable.

Without understanding, his memories were more intangible than ever. His experience more irrelevant. They were. She is. Why couldn't it be different? So without much hesitation, he confided in her as much as he could without slowing his pace. Skirting a pile of trash he'd been passing since his first excursion to the Ofriyu Mar just a few months ago, he started to explain.

"I've seen you notice it," he said. "The twitches. Or whatever you want to call it. The left arm."

He gestured with it for her to follow as he took a shortcut down a narrow alley, and it jerked again briefly, as if on cue.

"It's a consciousness somewhat independent of my own," he said over his shoulder. "That is to say, I'm not in complete control. I limit its impulses where I can, but I'm seldom entirely successful, which is what you see: the leftover impulse breaking through."

The alley was very familiar to him. They were close. He could even smell the slightly musty, slightly acrid scent that he'd expected the smoke to have. A dull pain was growing in his leg.

"I don't have the time to explain to you the how of it, but I will explain some of the why and a bit more of the what," he said. "Suffice it to say, I was not always an alchemist. That requires a certain degree of magical affinity, which I never possessed.

"The..." he paused to choose his next word carefully, hoping to capture the correct idea as concisely as possible. "Expertise.. that I draw upon for my alchemy.. It is inextricably linked with my affliction."

Just around the corner was his lab. He could hear a great deal of commotion. It seemed that the scene had drawn unexpected visitors. Daq stopped and listened, barely able to make out the voice of someone barking orders--a man from the city guard he assumed.

Daq looked back to Pagusel. His leg was starting to hurt badly, which fueled his impulse to keep things brief and get other things over with.

"I intend to use my power to save my lab," he said simply. "But doing so will, in all likelihood, exacerbate my curse."

He took a deep breath and began to relax, something he hadn't done in years. Closing his eyes, he looked down at his feet and focused inward, dismantling barricades and opening cages that he'd constructed over the years.

The unavailable part of him tried to warn him that while confiding, even partially, in Pagusel had been bad judgment, his current course of action was nothing short of awful, but the message didn't make it through.

Perhaps the impulse was so strong that its garbled, diluted form constituted what he said next, or perhaps his concern for Pagusel wasn't rooted in a center governed by judgment.

"If something seems amiss, especially something to do with me, I urge you to run away," he said in a distracted monotone. His mind was occupied with other tasks, and when it was finished with them, he opened his eyes again.

Daq caught a glimpse of himself reflected in a small pool of water at his feet. He was surprised by how quickly some of the changes had started. They were barely perceptible, but years of experience with them told him what to look for.

Full feeling returned to his arm. Daq felt himself flex and stretch. He tried his best to avoid looking directly at Pagusel, hoping not to scare her with the recognition of a few faint traces of a firm, serpentine yellow that had begun to replace his usual clear blue of his eyes.

[Gizmo]

The inner wall curved continuously forward, pummeling the ground with a smooth rhythm as the gyroscopic core applied forward gravitational pressure. Grandpa Gnome reclined in the great red armchair on the equatorial floor of Gizmo, packing a pipe and muttering to himself, when he was interrupted by a shout from above. Then in front, then below him. Bloody irritating...

Pappa Gnome was orbiting around him, working his section vigorously from his platform, flexing plates to push off the ground and nudge their course gently to the left or right when he was below decks, and making split-second openings and peeping out at the street with a periscope when he was above. "Quit packin' that pipe, ye old codger. Ye'll not have a moment to smoke it when we get to whur we're goin', an' I'll not have ye cloudin' up the place whail we're in motion. Why don' ye make yerself useful with a stethoscope belowdecks? If summat blows up, I'd like te know whur it's comin' from.

A snarl escaped Grandpa's nostrils as he slammed the pipe down onto a pile of books and waited for his section to come up to the horizon. The in-motion mounting system that Pappa Gnome had devised required little in the way of acrobatics from the eldest of the three, and he mounted his section simply by standing in place at the edge of the Living Room and pressing a button. When it came up under him, it shifted course slightly away from the inner wall and lifted up the section of floor upon which Grandpa was standing.

Soon, his grumbling filled the core in stereo as he whizzed about the curved inner face of Gizmo, a stethoscope apparatus set into a mechanically sunken surface on his platform so that it grazed his center plate each time he touched bottom. His eyes flitted back and forth in their age-withered crevices as he picked apart the sounds of the street ahead.

He raised his head and shouted into an aluminum horn pipe which found its counterparts on the other two platforms. "Ey, watch yer step, ye upstart, thur's a whole wallop o' people up ahead, trampin' around like nutters."

This comment was directed at the youngest of the three gnomes, Junior, who immediately pulled back on the ratchet he had been idly turning, and engaged a smaller gear before continuing the lazy forward thrust. Again, his horn blasted his left ear with Grandpa's gristly admonishments: "An' put down that damned fairy tale. If yer goin' ta read on th' job, at least read summat that doesn' rot yer brain."

This chiding brought no response from Junior beyond a raised eyebrow and a pursing of the lips that said "give it up, ye' old runt".

Beyond the enclosing plate armour was a scene that Pappa Gnome found bewildering at best. He was able to look for longer increments of time now that Gizmo had slowed down, and he scanned the faces outside the billowing building for one that he recognized. He saw some guards, but only one that he knew by name. His back was turned to them, so he shouted in the aluminum horn to Grandpa Gnome: "Gramps, kin ye call Gant o'er here?"

Grandpa Gnome looked incredulously at his horn before shouting back: "Whut in th' blazin' farts is goin' on out there tha' he ain't seen us yet? Or is 'e daft?" WIthout waiting for a response, he turned to his megaphone. When he spoke, he did it slowly, and twisted a torqued pipe protruding from its side so that inlaid pressure chambers and corkscrew fragments within the megaphone contracted and expanded, making his voice sound louder, grittier and dirtier, with a deep bass undertone.

"GANT! What 'n hell 's happenin', an' why am I here instead o' finishin' me book?"

[Xyon_of_Calhoun]

((OOC: This is a combined post as Xyon and Zebren.))

Zebren groaned as he stood up, the speed with which he'd hit the wall having made a sizeable impression both on his skull and the surface of the wall itself. As he stood up, the comment Xyon had just made finally filtered through into his consciousness.

"Zebren Avern. You are under arrest."

He began to laugh humourlessly, a rattling, echoing sound stemming perhaps from a broken rib, or some other type of chest injury. It sounded fluid, liquid, and even as he remarked on that, he stopped short as he heard a yet more terrifying noise from outside.

"GANT! What 'n hell 's happenin', an' why am I here instead o' finishin' me book?"

His head snapped swiftly around at that, and then back to the Xenetian at eye-level with him, who'd also been suitably distracted by it. The honourable cretin's armour glinted through the smoke, effectively indicating to Zebren exactly where he should not hit him.

Jeren was in his hand in an instant, red light flaring as he spun through the air into Zebren's waiting hand, lighting up the edges of the smoke cloud, now finally starting to dissipate, like crimson lightning. Xyon began to turn his head back toward the Danteri at this, and even though his reflexes were sharp, Zebren had the element of surprise. Also the fact that he'd already been in motion before Jeren had been in his hand, which added to the sword's acceleration as he drove the pommel into the bridge of Xyon's nose at speed.

It was, perhaps at this point, that Xyon's mind finally relented it's insane hatred of helmets, as a little protection from that impact would have been nice. As he felt his nose break, and the cheekbone on the left hand side of his face snapped in unison, owing to the angle which he'd had his head at and the fact that he'd tried and failed to dodge it, the familiar sickly sensation of blood mingling with Danteri steel filtered it's way back into his mind, and Inohen clattered to the floor.

Panic flared in his chest and lit up his synapses like a chain of fireworks slamming into his brain and detonating. The pain in his face amplified a hundredfold, as did his alertness, his reflex and his speed. Family traits come in handy some times.

He spat out some blood that had pooled into his mouth and, keeping his head down and away from the Danteri, drove his pauldronned shoulder into Zebren's stomach, driving him back into the alchemist's apartment and into the wall immediately available. From the look on his face, he'd winded the unholy creature, and so he took a step back, watching his adversary fold up at the middle, and picked up Inohen.

He shouted to Theo, without taking his gaze from the winded Danteri, wincing somewhat at the pain even moving his mouth caused him.
"Theo! That had better not be Gizmo!"

[Pagusel]

The unusual scent of the smoke in the air served as a sensory backdrop to Daq's explanation. That chemical print in the air they were breathing hinted, like Daq's story, at an unnatural arrangement, an ill-advised union of some sort.

When he sought her glance, his face was as if dissolving behind a haze of orange. The illusion cleared when a gust of air down the narrow path displaced the smoke. A lot of shouting was carried on that gust.

The smoke was the result of some reaction between two or more volatile things in the lab, that much was clear. Whether item A could be said to act on item B, or whether the reverse would be said, the smoke was, objectively, the product of the two. Daq's intent to somehow halt this reaction seemed about as futile as any attempt to clarify what was going on within him in speakable terms. Some things just cannot be deconstructed.

Pagusel stopped at the puddle when Daq did. He had changed somewhat even before he warned her about such things. He flexed his rogue arm, and Pagusel caught sight of its reflection in the puddle. The corner of his elbow's reflection framed another scene unfolding, upside-down. Without venturing past the edge of the wall, Pagusel could see a hint of the events around the corner in this reflection.

The limbs of many hurried figures flickered in and out of view. Everything viewed through the puddle was in shades of brick and amber. Pagusel drew her back up against the wall and listened to the unclear shouts of several voices.

Daq had warned her against things being "amiss," a vague recommendation if ever there were. She dropped her gaze again to the puddle to watch the pattern of ripples forming in response to some deep oscillating sort of force delivered through the ground.

She did not take her eyes off the water, and kept view of Daq's actions this way. "I will be fine," she said.