Where do you run to escape from yourself..

[Scene in progress..]

Angels fall with the rain

[To be continued..]

Gifts, and the return of Venor Silenti

[To be continued..]

The Kalda Cafe

The evening was a blur. I had started off for a cafe in the district with Trakkon. Circumstances neccesitated his quick departure and I traveled on alone. After taking my seat, it was none other than the black whore that belongs to the Boarding House that was there to take my order.

Strange...and the evening got stranger still..

[To be continued.]

Past Revisited

There are many people I'd expect to walk into on Sixth Street. Trakkon Rue was not one of them.

[To be continued..]

Black Caesar

With pressure coming from many sides, I needed Kyron's aid more than I could afford to be his enemy. Our previous meeting at the Stadium of Blades did not go well. Nor did he receive my refusal to attack Woodbridge warmly. I think perhaps he was as aware as I of the greater strength we posed together rather than separately. We had adjourned to his office, and at his invitation I wrote the agreement. Later that evening I brought the document with me to the Tabidian Towers. I had even dressed for the occassion. Though I was armed, it was covertly so. One does not approach treaties with swords drawn, but keeps them concealed while offering olive branches in the opposite hand. It was a mutually beneficial alliance. I sat perched upon the corner of his desk, and pressed the paperwork across to him.

The terms were simple. We shared the city. Clear cut lines were drawn. The alliance allowed us in each other's territories, however forbade any action within them without prior agreement. The consequences for infringing upon the other's territory were grim. The stakes set so high, that neither one of us would likely trespass. With little cajoling needed, he agreed, and signed his name. Not before I signed my own of course.

Circumstances aside, I left that evening with my grip upon the throat of southern Ar. I had his backing, and he mine. He would support my push back into the Trevelyan. A force I sorely needed.

Somehow I am certain it is a favor that I will be expected to repay at a later date. For now I am merely concerned with securing what I have, and squelching the uprising of Gaius Claudius in the Trevelyan.

Upon leaving, I returned to the Anbar and ran into a face I hadn't seen in many years. Litereally ran into him. Trakkon. He'd grown up.

The Contract

I had returned to Ludmilla's brothel to air my grievances. Little did I realize my timing was..as usual..dead on. Or completely off, depending upon how you look upon it. I was welcomed in, along with a man that brushed past abruptly into the great foyer of the extravagant building. The girl that greeted us, she was familiar. Perhaps it was her garments. Or the onyx gaze I had looked into many times before. I said nothing to her.

Wine was poured and introduction made, between myself and the man that was apparently my employer. I forget the false name that was given now, Mister Smith? Nevertheless, it was a mooth point. My interest had lied more upon the note that was delivered to the Madame. So close to intercepting it, and yet so far. We were taken upstairs to one of many painfully feminine rooms the brothel had to offer. And then I was alone with him.

I had been under the impression the silver was in exchange for the death of a man. In a gross misinterpretation, my Mr. Smith had wanted something else entirely. "Six silver?" I whistled faintly, "If you'd asked nicely. I'd have fucked you for free."

As it turned out, way leads onto way, and a simple inquiry of clarification uncovered what I had initially sought from him.

"Agamemnon Sarce," he spoke finally, "Do you know him?"

[Scene in progress.]

Broken Bonds

I had come upon them rather accidentally. Camillus speaking at length with Noemi in the cluttered streets of the city. His arm was over her head, braced to the wall. Almost like teenagers just prior to a kiss. I was enraged. She was cavorting with the enemy.

The bolt split the air, and embedded itself into the wall just beside Noemi's head. It had occured to me to kill Cam from this spot, I had a clear view, a clean shot. Though to do so would have torn through his carcass and Noemi's as well, and I was not yet ready to dispose of the Poetess. Not yet. I only remained long enough to watch her faint into Cam's arms.

Stupid bitch.

Though this seem madness...there is method to it.

Damos had left, but there was little time for mourning his disappearance. I now had a dinner, with the same poetess we had been avoiding for months. I arrived not as myself, but the Lady Lilith, much to the utter surprise of Noemi. Complete with armed men and the garments of a high caste woman of means. It had taken her aback, pushed her off balance. Clothed in feminine drapes of rich silken fabrics, scandelously bare armed, bejeweled and polished.

We never got around to eating. The meeting was as I predicted strictly business, and she did not poison me, conveniently enough. I didn't think she would be that foolish. I left with one vial that night, and a kiss that left the dark haired woman sputtering. Our alliance seemed to get along well enough. Despite her lack of fashion sense, I did not find the Poetess' companionship unpleasant. I was still due two more vials upon upholding my end of the bargain. A bargain I was willing to uphold, that is until I ran across her cavorting with my enemy..Camillus.

Run away love..

I'm not sure what I was thinking, allowing them both in the same house together. Damos over time I fear fell into a paralyzing dementia. One that robbed him of reason. As his fear, and his paranoia swelled, he became almost child like.

Perhaps it is my fault. Perhaps I was a factor in driving him mad. But nevertheless, when a slave girl showed up at the door of the Diamond Back, Damos had recognized her. He fled up the stairs, but it wasn't until I had taken the letter that I realized why he ran. Apparently the girl was owned by Noemi. I was invited to dinner at the House of Mirth.

By the time I was able to go back upstairs to find my musician, he was long gone. And I, now lacking one pair of robes of concealment. I didn't chase him. I don't chase men. I knew he would leave eventually, I had told him so. Perhaps it was kindest of me to let him go. I am not sure I could protect him anymore. My attentions had been drawn in opposite directions, and for the moment, it was all I could do just to keep myself alive. He didn't take his painting. He didn't even say goodbye.

The house was uncomfortably quiet then. I returned to the parlor to work on my newest creation, a portrait of a familiar Taurentian.

I told myself I wouldn't miss you

But I remembered

What it feels like beside you

I really miss your hair in my face

And the way your innocence tastes

And I think you should know this

You deserve much better than me

From the ashes: rebirth

Construction has begun on the lots burnt down by the fires. Most of the owners were more than willing to part with the land left behind for a reasonably cheap price, in favor of leaving the city or finding more secure lodging.

[To be continued..]

Wanted: Alive

Venor, Damos and I ventured to the Tendora's Tit. Damos was busy expending himself on whores in the paga den. That's when I found it posted outside the doors of the building.

Noemi had posted a Wanted poster. His only saving grace was no one had painted his likeness on the vellum. Ten silver tarsks. Roughly one gold in worth. She is hungrier for vengeance than I realized.

[Scene in progress - to be continued]

Blurring the lines

Deciding to have dinner with Kyron might have been foolhardy, but in light of the recent Trevelyan uprising and the murmurs of a greater civil war on the tongues of peasants, I need his help. The fabric of Ar appears to be holding tenuously upon frayed ends, it is only a matter of time.

His ultimatum regarding Woodbridge still stands. I have much to think about.

[Scene in progress - to be continued.]

The Trevelyan Sleen

Not all wars are fought among the powerful. Not all politics are decided over the strategy of Generals. Gaius Claudius has begun to infiltrate my district. It first showed up in the graffiti that marked the Anbar's boundries. The diamonds over written with the stylized sleen of Claudius' rag tag fleet of peons.

In light of recent murders, Mastavius has informed me that Gaius has put a hit out on me. There is something to be said for irony. It appears the Trevelyan Sleen's balls have finally dropped.

It is a shame they will have to be eunuched.

[To be continued]

Laughing at the Rain

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain
A little out of touch
little insane
It's just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin' back
Runaway train tearin' up the track
Runaway train burnin' in my veins
I run away
but it always stays the same

"So, what about me pisses you off?" I had asked Venor, staring at the ceiling tiredly. "That you have no hope," was his reply. "Hope? Hope for what?"

"For happiness. This guy has apparently hurt you enough, that you refuse to feel anything. What you can't drown in your work, you drink away."


Some days are not as bad as others. Some days I can drink away the hole inside of me. Some times I can forget, by immersing myself in work. But it's always there when I wake up in the morning, like a knife I can't remove. I miss him.

I didn't intend to start all the fires in the beginning. The first was a crime of passion. I had come home to find him gone. He took everything, including Nashoti and Sahara. In a rage I set the entirety of Novus Initium in flames. And then I stood there. I didn't know he was watching. A friend. I suppose in retrospect I'm glad he was. If he hadn't drug me out, forcibly and against my will, I would not be here now. I wanted to die. But he pulled me from the flames and out the back of the building. The smoke filled my lungs, I felt like they were on fire with every hacking cough.

Once I finally got my bearings, I slipped away. But Kyron caught me, just as the rest of the District started to go up in flames as well. He knew, and at the time I didn't care.

The second fire was purely to incite the General for his ill treatment of me. It was revenge. But soon I began to realize when I did these things, when I destroyed bits of the city, I forgot. And the fires too became something that purified, and cleared my head. It was an outlet, a channel, pouring all my grief into a rage that this city has never seen before.

Backed Against The Wall

"Whats in it for me?" A simple question that required a simple answer. Jonathan didn't scare him all that much. He'd simply relocate as he'd done time and time again. Death was inevitable. He'd prefer it to be death at the hands his own enemy.

"What do you want?" Slowing she turned again to regard him from a safe distance. She didn't need his help to squelch the Trevelyan's impending uprising. But it wouldn't have hurt either. Now that Venor was Magistrate of the Anbar, her vice grip hold on that portion of the city was even tighter and about the jugular. Claudius would have difficulty moving in as it was. That didn't mean she wouldn't be a target. And if Claudius could take her out before she could take him out, chaos would come.

"Since you like setting fires so much..." He was silent for a time and just the sheer thought of this made him boil over with pleasure. Joy, even. Like unwrapping a gift at Christmas time. "Woodbridge."

"Woodbridge?" Her expression drifted from surprise to incredulousness to outright rage, "Are you out of your fucking mind!? I've already got Rowan up my ass with sticks and you want me to torch the Administrator's house??" She walked a step or two in his direction, then stopped, whirling about abruptly and began continuing down the street, "No thanks, General. You aren't getting me impaled in the fucking square that easily."

"A copper for a black hat, Savana?" The General spoke with a smirk, watching her stalk away.

"What?" Slowing slightly she glanced back at him with a narrow of eyes. He'd lost his mind. Officially now.

He reached into his tunic and pulled from the pocket a small parcel. He tossed it carelessly her way and shifted his weight. "Three so far. Loyal until the end...you should be proud. I figure if you put a price on them I'd get more opportunities to get more information." Inside that small parcel were three folded black bandana's and three ears. "Woodbridge. Think about it."

Homecoming of Nex Adveho

Nex had been gone for quite some time. I had almost expected him to be there when I relocated Damos to the Diamond Back. The house stood empty however. It's not uncommon for Nex to disappear on a whim, and return just as vagrantly. He has always been my friend, and my back up when Tza was not around. Though I know his feelings delved to more than just friendship, Nex never pushed those boundries that were set. He knew I loved Nashoti.

When he returned, he knew. Word travels fast I guess. I was at the Stadium of Blades, watching the red haired girl that Damos said knew where Noemi lived. Too, there was a strange man in the fighting sands doing some sort of chain dance. But I digress, it was then that Nex found me. His arm curled my waist from behind. I looked back, half expecting to see Tza, old familiar habits die hard. Even when it is clear they are dead, and no amount of grief will bring them back. I was not unhappy to see Nex though. I had missed him during his time away. I was glad his companionship had returned. Though I've been surrounded by a sea of faces of late, I am at my core, stricken with a loneliness nothing can fill.

He has made it clear what he wants now that I have been left behind. He has made a bid on my affections. I do not know that I have anything to give anyone. I am broken.

And in more trouble than he knows.

Graffiti at the Ruins of the Insula of Pompeius

Methodically smoking my cigarette
With every breath I breathe out the day
With every delicious sip I drink away the night.

All her kaiila and
All her men.
Will not raise Pompeius again.

You're a daisy if you do..

13th day of En'Kara (1) in the year 10,157 CA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Insula of Pompeius on Ludmilla's Alley of the Slave Brothels caught fire yesterday afternoon. The flames were kept controlled, but the damage to the insula was irreparable. Hector Pompeius is thought to have perished inside. Authorities are investigating


Graffiti in the District of the Street of Brands
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your losses are regrettable
But necessary
Fodder for the machine
Sustenance for the beast
A feast
You are the quiet
The accepting
You watched when they
Tore down the walls of your city
Brick by brick
The bourgeois apologist
The landed defiler
All filed past you
Where was your anger?
Where was your @#%$ pride?
Rise.
Do not allow them the satisfaction
Of a contrite reply
For each eye an eye
For each tooth a tooth
Have you no venom?
The ruthless
The blasphemous
The famished tarsks of progress
Rut right through you
Brothers of low status
They come right at us
Torches lit
Blades at the ready
Steady
If you haven’t a voice
There is no need to fight
Author//Szol

The Response

Day after day
She rises
She sets
on fire the things that decay.

Born to shine,
but first to burn.
Another shall fall before the next turn.

The Red Room

I'd gone to meet him, the General. We'd worked together in the past. He was, when I was getting the drug trade in Ar off the ground, charged with my overseas trade. So there were no particular warning flags in meeting him this day. I had done so a thousand times before. I didn't even see it coming, the one that snuck up behind to strike me on the back of the head. Pain, a sharp blinding light, and then darkness.

When I awoke, the pain was excrutiating. In one brief moment of hallucination, I thought it was Tza that bathed my brow with a damp cloth. Confusion etched, until the fog cleared and I angrily shoved Kyron's hand away from me. He knows my secret, but he has no formidable proof. To the contrary, it would be far easier for me to paint him the arson and murderer than for him to do so to me.

Our meeting was not an amicable one. He backed me into a corner, with contracts, and threats, and I came out snarling. In the end I fell, with a concussion and bruised ribs. Perhaps it was good to come face to face with my own mortality and fallibility. It was a lush prison, and he stayed there and stared at me the entire night.

The next morning I was released, wounded but alive. The game from that point forward, had now changed.

Fire and Ice

5th day of En'Kara (1) in the year 10,157 CA
Brosbius' Tinker Toy Shop located on the Avenue of the Central Cylinder caught fire at the tenth ahn today. While the damage was significant to the shop, it was quickly controlled by city personnel. Other shops in the area were unaffected. Three adults and two children were hospitalized at the Hawthorne Clinic for smoke inhalation. There is no word yet on the cause of the fire, authorities are investigating.

Graffiti

Ever-forward, man of the republic.
Keeper of words,
Turner of phrase,
Reveler of night,
Feaster of days.
March forth on through Saleria
Trod upon the grasses of the Upstart
Repast, imbibe, depart
She is yet the light
Upon my Home Stone
In her arms
I am un-alone
Sunned and grown
Reaching, preaching
To the choir.
I desire
The flames and fire and
Smoke that tears the eye
Author//Szol

Eye for an Eye

The stench of Novus' demise was still on my clothing. I was at the Rabid Sleen, drowning what was left of my jagged and bleeding heart in enough alcohol to probably kill me. If I were that lucky. That was when Venor chose to storm in. He'd drawn his blade and I just sat there, watching him. The sharp end of it impaled in the wood of my table, I made no move. He was annoyed at my apathy toward the challenge, toward the danger. He didn't know how much I would have appreciated the blow, if he'd had the balls to do it. I got up and went up stairs to my room, I just wanted to sleep. But he was hot on my heels.

He was mad. Livid. Both for the fact I had bedded Damos and not him, and for the fact I was now despondently grieving the loss of the only man I loved. I told him to get out. Get out and not come back unless it was upon his knees. He did leave, but he returned the next day.

It was not on his knees. It was ranting and raving, threatening, and then he threw a small pouch on my bed. It was his eye. He'd cut out his eye, some bizarre love token, some very psychopathic attempt at proving ..what? Devotion? Needless to say, flowers would have been nice.

Graffiti on the walls

"If I find you any further than the Metellan again Savana.." His grip tightened around her wrist with a narrowing of eyes she did not shirk from. She smelled thick of the smoke, of the fire. The guilt worn heavily as a mantle upon her shoulders, "You can't keep me out of your garden, General."

To die in the ashes. In the flames.
To rise again as something else.
Try, try to keep the Snake out of the Garden.
This defiled Eden too shall be mine.


1st day of En'Kara (1) in the year 10,157 CA
A fire broke out last evening in the Garden District at 17th ahn, between Achilles and Nykus Street. The fire is presumed to have started in the Novus Initium estate and spread to neighboring residences causing significant damage. One of the residents is thought to have perished inside. There is no word yet as to the cause of the fire, however foul play is being investigated.

Vernal infernal
First day of the first turn
Novus Initium
No pardoned propitium
It burns
A furnace
An oven
Ashes left to feed the Garden soil.

Toil and trouble
There, amidst the rubble
Last Hand the blade drank from two
A quill-pusher left dead
A skin merchant's throat bled
The worm has turned
Piss and blood
And oh so much mud
No man is safe in his home.

Dew Drop
Dropping dew
Then the blade turned and dropped you
Erstwhile cup companion
Found Lucius abandoned
Pilfered and poked and run-through
Eighteen days in
It started and continues anew.

Are there osts in the alley?
Black rain in the valley
Of the narrow and twisted
Should-be-resisted avenues
Brush the sing-song from your shoulders
There's your pride before the fall
It is a murder by numbers
That humbles you all.

-Graffiti//Author: Szol

Let's play a game

Let's play a game.
Let's pretend for a second, you don't know who I am or what I do.
Let's just put it to the side.
[Lyrics: Tell Me]

I don't know what had originally possessed me to chase him. I think it was something in how he moved. Not that he moved like prey, not at all, at the crux of it. He moved like something that I knew would try and kill me, and perhaps that is exactly why when he started running, I started chasing. He took me through alleys and side streets, over fences and down fire escapes, stripping pieces of his clothing along the way, leaving foot prints and the essence of him in his path. He was luring me, I knew that much. And I chased him anyway.

When he finally came to a halt, holed up inside an abandoned and burnt out building, I slowed my chase to an indolent prowl. The adrenaline was intoxicating. In the beginning he was just another high caste haunt. Just another stuffy elite jerk-off making a living off blowing the high council for favors and a break in property tax. Somewhere between the point where I started chasing, to the point where I'd abruptly stopped, I realized he was something else entirely. He was high stakes game. Now I know why men take their chances in hunting the larl.

I drew a blade upon entering the darkened building, prepared to test my mettle and mortality if need be, but was unexpectedly greeted with a bottle of wine and a chair. He wanted to play a game of questions. I like games.

I am not sure how much either of us got in the way of answers. I did learn two things. He goes by two names, as I do. Agamemnon and Nero. I decided I preferred the latter of the two. Too, he was intrigued it seemed, in how I moved. My lack of feminine gesticulations and responses. It smacked of something peculiar to me, as this tends to be what reviles most of Ar's elite upper crust.

As I rose to move around the edge of the table, to further close the distance between us, he ran again. This time I did not follow.

The hunt is not over. Though I'm no longer sure who is the hunter and who is the hunted.

We leave at dawn..

Morning came, and so did Venor apparently. Damos and I had been discussing our ultimate departure. I did not demand he come with me, but gave him the option. In either case, I was leaving. He decided to come. We had three errands to run. He wished to stop at Tendora's Tit, the Tabidian Towers, and a painting shop in Ar. For some reason, upon learning of my skill, he grew extremely anxious that I pick it up again; despite my differences with my mother.

That's when the door flew open. [To be continued..]

Beautiful Sinner

The first night, Damos had slept in my chamber for his own protection. He took the bed, and I took the floor between him and the door. The second night was for the same reason. I remember what happened distinctly, but yet through the haze of events, it almost felt as though I had been drugged...

After the woman had left Aria Fori, I returned for my room. Venor at some point followed me, emerging once it was safe, to query on what had occured. As I began to recant some of what I'd learned, Damos poked his head in. Venor's arm slung around him in a fond manner. I am not quite sure what the relationship between the two is, but at the time I had figured it was something of a carnal bent.

I advised Damos not to leave the house that evening. News he did not take well and turned, slinking away. Too, I told Venor he ought to bring Damos to his room. But when I said as much, the Magistrate stepped into mine and shut the door. Presumably with the inclination to sleep with me. I refused and sent him away, a rejection he did not take kindly and kicked the door on his way out. Then I retrieved the musician myself. Creating a pallet upon the floor, I slept there the first night, between him and the door, with a blade beneath the pillow. Damos slept in my bed.

Come morning I rose before him, and slipped away for morning business and to discuss with Tza what I knew so far. When I returned, I found him in the kitchen. We had tea, and spoke at length. Small talk. As the cooking staff returned, I led him back to my room. I wanted to get more informationi out of him. He stopped on the thresh over the door, and I pushed him lightly into the room so I had room to close it. The look on his face was strange.

We spoke of this woman and Damos for ahns, who later in my inquisition, I would learn was named Noemi. Still, he seemed to skirt subjects the more I cajoled him. "I am afraid to say anything," he said, insinuating himself into my arms unexpectedly. "Don't be afraid, who would I tell?" was my murmured reply, resting my chin to the top of his head in an empathetic and soothing gesture. The closeness, or maybe it was the smell of his hair, I know not. But it was a strange sensation. Like no other drug I had ever experienced. I suddenly wanted him.

I took the musician to my bed that night. Late into the evening and early into the next morning, I indulged in him. Whether it was absolution or damnation he provided, I will never fully know.

To snare a butterfly..

I had slipped away from Venor somewhere between the Stadium of Blades and the Teiban Sul Market on our way to find a cafe. Way leading onto way, I figured he'd find me. He had that ability I learned. Finding me in a crowd like a moth to a flame.

But for now I had made my way to the Kalonike Cafe in the Metellan District. The door shoved open, it jingled merrily, ironic given the narrow eyed glances I'd been subject to upon arrival. I was no stranger to this place but the red carpet was hardly rolled out. It is a haunt of business men and the lower but respectable castes alike. It was here I found Kyron.

Kyron and I go back a ways. We traveled from the Sardar together once in the same caravan. Though, we aren't, by any stretch of the imagination friends. To the contrary, I know he loathes me. My existance, my grip on the Anbar, drives him mad. The fact he cannot do much about it, even madder. He's tried to move into the district, and push out some of those that pay me for the privilege of being there. Their dismissal of him and his inert power likely has done nothing good for his arrogance. He hates me, but he doesn't disguise it. In the end, I suppose I respect a man that's not afraid to hate me. It's an honest and pure emotion, perhaps the only one in human nature that can't be tainted nor corrupt. He is one of two men I know, if given the opportunity, would lunge at the chance to see me fall from my throne.

Yet, I had been given a tip that he was here. There were questions I needed to ask and answers I hope he had. There were women missing from my district, many of whom owned businesses, and too a sudden mass of murdering among the High Council. Were the two related? I don't know.

Claiming the chair opposite him, we talked, and I got very little in the way of information I needed. Typical of Kyron, he was going to require more cajoling than I was interesting in dishing out. It was then they came through the front door. The woman from Tendora's Tit. I didn't recognize her at first, she wasn't dressed in pink. She was also accompanied by a man. They talked quickly and heatedly, the woman looking in my general direction more than once, then suddenly left the cafe. I made arrangements to meet Kyron later, and shoved up to follow the duo out into the street. There was something suspicious about her.

Crossing the street, it was then I saw her again. The man she'd originally accompanied with her collapsing abruptly to the cobbles. Before I could get to them, another man had helped her carry her consort down the road. He dropped his dagger, which I retrieved and now wear in my belt.

Then, with his perfect timing, my moth found me again in the crowd. We began to walk through the Metellan, and though I'm not sure why or how, we took a wrong turn and made it into the Trevelyan. The Trevelyan is its own animal. It is not my district, and the small villainous group of men that govern it, there is no love lost between us. They would like nothing better than to murder me in a dark alley in a mob, to take what I've spent so long building. As of now I have monopoly of the majority of import and export to Ar, through channels of corrupt officials. A thing they'd like to see shaken loose.

I told Venor to look less like a Magistrate, and though we were tailed for a while, we made it out and back to the Metellan and ultimately back to Aria Fori. I was ready to go to bed, but he stopped me outside. The discussion we had was a confidential one.

Before we could get inside, a woman in bright ghastly orange appeared. It was none other than the woman from Tendora's Tit, and the cafe this afternoon. If I was suspicious before, I was more so now. Was she following me? Or Venor.

The Magistrate allowed her entry, and I not wishing to entertain went to my room to change. When I returned, Venor had left, and I was alone with the woman. A fact I wasn't over joyed for, but dealt with politely enough. There is a madness in her eyes. One that deepened when she talked of Damos and then heard his music fill the air as if on cue. While she talked, I watched her, manipulated her with button pushing, and there seemed to be a few sensitive subjects. One of which, the most notable, the subject of fear. She is looking for Damos, and too, she is looking for Venor's sister. The woman they call Amanita. He'd taken something from her. Something about vials. She tried to offer me coin to kidnap the musician, an offer I declined and before long she had left.

Amanita. It seems everyone I have run into of late is looking for this woman. I gather there is a reason. One I am simply not aware of at this point. With luck I will remedy that soon.

Play on..

Various merchants have been going missing in my district. Either showing up dead, or not at all. In most cases, the death of strangers in the Anbar wouldn't have concerned me with any degree of urgency, but this is different. Those whose shops I frequent and keep under my hand pay me a percentage of their montly take for the privilege of residing here. In exchange of this, I offer the service of ensuring their livelihood is not burnt down in the middle of the night to a pile of cinder. It's a working relationship.

The culling of my herd is cutting into my ends. One of the surest ways to garner my attention, unwanted attention at that. It was this that brought me back to Tendora's Tit. I was looking for answers, answers that can often be found in a paga den when lips are loosened by the swill there. I did not ultimately find those answers, but I did find the Musician. When the den's owner approached, fishing for information, I paid for my drink and the company of Damos. He seemed somewhat uncomfortable, nervous. I'm not entirely sure if it was my presence that did it, or some other fear that never came to light.

Some ahns later into the evening the Magistrate Silenti showed up, taking a seat beside Damos. There was talk of his sister, this woman he calls Amanita. I have yet to meet her, but the more people I do meet, they all seem to have this one strange thing in common; the want to find her. Our discussion led to Damos' residence at Tendora's Tit, and then the coercion into bringing him back to Aria Fori. Damos is a man that seems to balk at little. The decision was made, and I sent Venor to negotiate the return of the musicians kalika, while I myself followed Damos into the pit he called a residence. It was cold in the cellar of the tavern, and small quartered. I could feel the tension crawl into my limbs slowly, memories like disjointed reels of tape flooding my mind's eye. Our sojourn into the bell of the Tit was brief though, and when I arrived back in the main part of the den Venor was in a bit of a fight with the den owner, presumably over Damos.

Maybe it is my advanced years, but when I can buy a man to shut the fuck up, I take every advantage to do so. It's faster, and does not require me to exert myself unnecessarily. Thus when Venor was getting no where with threats, I got what I wanted by way of coin. He was after all a merchant. Their avarice is reknown.

Venor had gone ahead to Aria Fori, and I waited for Damos to retrieve his kalika before leading him out of the paga den and for the streets of the Metellan again. "How did you even end up in such a place," I inquired of him on our walk back through the darkened streets. "I was..unwilling to return to my home," he confided. Home. I never did find out where Damos' supposed home is. We arrived quickly to the gates of Venor's estate, and I situated him and his kalika within the guest room opposite my own.

After he'd gone, I returned to my own bed. Though with a distinct amount of restlessness I was unaware the origins of.

To Let The Evil In

"Are you going to invite me to stay, Magistrate?" I asked, enjoying the bounty of the garden he'd shared with me. "You are always welcome in my home, Savana," I heard in answer from his lips. An invitation. An open one at that. I wonder if he knows how seriously I take that invitation, and how much I may use it to my own desires. This garden was his respite, a flourishing of jungle blooms that I could tell he took pride in. As my hand closed around the bell of a fragile bloom, I was reminded of another thing of beauty. A man. And it took a certain amount of will power not to crush its vulnerable fragile petals in my hand.

Beautiful things are only beautiful from a distance. When you look up close, their flaws are more pronounced. Even a butterfly in all its colors is horrific upon close scrutiny. Its bulbous eyes and scaley wing tips.

I had gone back to Aria Fori in search of the Physician to tend my wound, but ended up staying longer than I had anticipated. I left him angry, confused, perhaps even a bit resentful of me. Absolutely frustrated.

"All I know, is that you get this little charge out of wrapping me up like a spring, and just letting me loose whenever it pleases you. Affection, then dismissal. Irritation, then humor. People sometimes think I'm hard to predict, but you're intentionally going out've your way to be unpredictable." He was right about that. I couldn't gainsay him and so I did not, but answered in earnest, "That's my job."

There is something endearing about Venor when he's unsure of himself. Perhaps it's because he is often so sure of himself, and so laden with his own arrogance, that to see him falter and take pause, pleases me. Once he had left, and after another glass of wine, I'd finally slept. But this night it was not as soundly as I had hoped.

A Violent Redemption

I had a feeling I was going to lose this wager, and so I ensured I did not put up anything more than I was willing to part with. His debt was now a minor thing to me, and very easily racked up again if I was so inclined. For now, I was more interested in testing the mettle of the professed black mask turned politico. For a man with no formal training, he wasn't half bad.

The Magistrate has a fetish for power play. I think perhaps his desire for power is only superceded by his unconscious desire to have it be nearly wrenched away from his tenuous grasp. The blade tipped quarter-staff had skillfully come up from his knee to his inner thigh and bit into flesh, too close for his comfort to be sure. Hand-to-hand fighting for the sake of it alone is not my skill set. I am equipped with enough training to hold my own until a point that I might escape, but it is not for me to play these games. Still, I obliged him. He bled, and so did I.

There is something mentally clarifying about pain. It reminds us that we are still alive. The bleeding; that we are mortal. These are things that one is best reminded of now and again, lest we become too comfortable in our high perches. I allowed him his advantage, allowing only a glancing touch, save for one that cut decidedly deep. This was his game, mine would come later.

In a moment of foolish decision making however, he removed his belt and struck me with it across the thigh. The old oiled leather snaking around my leg sharply, covetously. The discomfort was minimal, hardly noticable, but the action itself was enraging. If pain is clarifying, anger is a dark fog. The tables were quickly turned back toward him, and the staff cast aside in favor of bloodying his face with precise strikes.

"All of us, be we man, or woman, or child, are within ourselves no more than animal. We wear the skin of civilization, the mask of manners, the cloak and hood of decency and morality. But beneath the guise, we are base. We are savage. And once you are immersed in this truth, Savana, there is no guise you may wear to let you forget it. They truly become no more than something to mask yourself from the other animals." He narrowed his eyes on me critcally the night prior to our combat. "You are an animal already though, aren't you."

"More than you know," I answered.

He watched me closely from the couch, "So the drinking is to keep you sedated.."

"I stop drinking, when I hunt" I had replied.

His debt was erased that night. Absolved through a bloody penance. I wish my own transgressions were so easily forgotten.

All Thy Sins Remembered - Confess To Me

I no longer remember where we'd met up, or why. My memory does however, remember that we found ourselves in the Great Stadium of Ar. I loathe this particular arena, with the cloistering of people; the smell of sweat and perfume is as thick as the crowds that push and shove to get to the men hawking drinks from their carts. The noise is enough to drive a sane man mad, the cries, the laughter, and the cheering. It appears this is a part of what it is to be Arian. I am not Arian.

I prodded him for information on Damos, and too, of this sister he has spoken of more than once. Rather than getting the information I wanted, I got the information I all ready had by observation alone. He is vulnerable. It is part of what makes him beautiful, that shuddering naive vulnerability. The world spins, and the Musician he is unaware even when he is its axis. Or so I surmised after the one evening with him and Venor.

My attempts to delve further, to sate my own agendas, were thwarted by the appearance of a woman I'd seen once before. I don't know her name, but she seems to know mine, and she took an immediate liking to Venor. Perhaps it was his frustration with the woman that was irritating him. Or perhaps my own instigation of the situation and manipulation of the conversation to further incense his discomfort, but he touched me. Twice. He seemed pleased I did nothing, though I did pointedly look. A touch to the thigh. A slap to the arm. Small, easily overlooked. They were noted.

He requested my escort back to the Metellan. I obliged him, again, for my own reasons. It was here our path detoured and to the Diamond Back. I hadn't returned there since the day I was taken away in manacles as a prisoner of Ar. I remembered everything as if it had been just days before. The memories like reels of tape unwinding with the scent of the overgrown garden or the sound of the old gate's hinges. The tarns that circled overhead. The Arian Guard that surrounded the Estate. It took an entire city to get him back. I took him from under the Taurentians' noses. There hadn't been such an insult to their supposed skill since the disappearance of the Hinrabian.

The past, is just that. And the house when we entered was much the same as when I'd left it, just laden with far more dust than I remembered. Nex had been staying here on and off, but I had not seem him in some time and not surprisingly he was absent from the house when we arrived. "Why have you brought me here?" he asked. "For two reasons," I answered in earnest and led him down the narrow stairwell into the basement. It was here, in the damp and cold confines of a storage cellar, that I unearthed pieces of my past. Macabre paintings, he seemed curious of but never inquired about, were piled in trunks. While I dug through the mire, the boxes and the crates for something in particular, he in the darkness of the room confessed. Revealing his life in sordid details, and I listened. I listened to all of it.

"Ah-ha, I found it," lifting some some of the books off an old dark wooden case I removed the box and put it down before him on the cold stone floor. The worn surface was burned with a tribal design, one that seemed lost on him and I was inclined to allow him to remain ignorant for now. Inside however he did not need explanation. They were kaissa pieces, carved of bone. Mwoga had given them to me during my expendition in the jungles, and my visit to the various Ukungu villages along the lake Ngao. It was a trade for service. Now it was in the hands of Venor.

We left the basement and returned to the parlor. I did not ask him this time if he wanted a drink, I merely gave him one and he drank without protest. Here, to his queries, I revealed some insight into my own makings while looking beyond the drapery and to the Metellan streets outside. Men are determined at birth the path they will follow. Their caste is determined. Sometimes even their companion. My own nature is irrefutable. I was determined to be this. Not all are destined to be heros. Some of us, we're destined to be the reason men fall.

We discussed intensely the finer points of the city's corruption. His own appointment was in my eyes answer enough, and he could not gainsay this. Ar rots from within, teeming with criminals at her very heart's core. I am not to blame for her fall from grace, but I will profit from it. In this I feel no remorse.

Finally, comfortable, he asked of me idly as I sat on the edge of the desk in the parlor, "What was the second thing you brought me here for?" With a crook to finger I beckoned him, and he rose, moving to stand before me with an air of apprehension I could have licked off the tip of my finger. Sliding from the table, I stood before him as well, snaking my hand through his hair in which to coil as my lips grazed his cheek and his jaw line. He didn't trust me, and he reached for my opposite hand, perhaps anticipating a knife. When nothing was to be found, I felt a subtle relaxation of the musculature in his frame close to my own. A kiss, he coveted a kiss.

It was then with that grip in his hair I slammed his face into the desk bent over, rattling the ledgers and spraying blood across the wall. I followed him down, leaning to whisper against his ear, "If you ever fucking strike me again, the next I see you, I will have your balls removed with wire clippers." "Understood," he growled around his own bloody saliva.

It appeared the Magistrate thought I had forgotten. I hadn't.

Startled, pained, and likely angry he lunged and fell atop me. Acrid jibes gave way to the persuasion of a knife into his side, then finally an impatiently abrupt bodily removal of him. Bleeding and bruised, he crouched like an animal upon the floor, staring at me as I rose and gathered my belongings without further animosity. As we parted ways, he again laid bare confession, "I am fond of a killer."

And another falls.

Company Kept

"You remind me of my sister," he'd said. "I assure you, Magistrate, I am nothing like your sister," I had replied.

It appears I have found myself in the company of the Magistrate of the Metellan District more than is likely healthy for his political reputation. Speculation and intrigue is often quick to rear its head, especially around the time of elections.

It is not however for such overtly profitable reasons I have taken up company with Venor. He owes me a favor, he is in my debt. Whether the favor owed is worth the original bargain, is not my concern. It is the debt itself, not how we arrived at it, that has my interest and personal investment.

His behavior of late I've found curious. Is he merely eccentric? Or completely insane. The latter could be manipulated to further my own interests, the former may prove more troublesome than I had anticipated.

I found myself last evening in the Metellan, more specifically the Tendoras Tit and once again accompanied by the Magistrate. I am no stranger to dens, not in any city, they are a cloying, festering, cesspool of information. If you buy enough rounds you can find out anything about just about anyone. This is though, the first time I have seen a creature in such an amount of garish pink that it nearly hurt my eyes to look upon her. An entertainer, I had gathered, which would be the reason she was not subject to gang rape and enslavement upon entering the establishment unescorted.

There was also, the Musician. Damos I believe he was introduced as. I am unsure what his relation is to Venor, other than they appear to be close and have a history that dates beyond Ar itself. He is beautiful. And yet notoriously behind such beauty is deformity; a vile darkness. I find myself wondering the extent of his.