Thu Nov 03, 2005 11:31 am
"My work here is done."
A simple phrase; half statement of fact, half incantation, delivered in a flat recitation devoid of the normal inflections of human speech. The words echoed back from concrete walls pocked with near-perfect cylindrical holes and marked with abstract spatterings of crimson, through air hazed by acrid grey smoke, around the dark figure looming in the half-light. A figure that grew gradually indistinct, misty, fading along with the echos of the inhumanly precise words it spoke.
My work here is done...
Dissolution. Discorporation. Shaking off the restrictions of reality, a shape glides sharklike through layers of existance; guided by instinct, hunting, drawn . Not by scent of blood; by scent of suffering, evil, horror, wrongs unavenged. Drawn to Myrken and its unquiet dead and living both, to an unknown enemy somewhere in their midst who works nightmares in the name of the nightmare he worships...
The market square in Myrkentown; a bustling hub of daytime activity, swarming with people both selling and buying, raucous voices haggling or arguing or extolling the virtues of their wares and sometimes themselves. They barely faltered when the dark figure simply shivered out of thin air, regaining physical existance halfway between the ironmongers' stall and a butcher's table of freshly-cut meats.
One man who'd been paying more attention to the women moving through the market than where he was going fetched up short against what felt rather like a solid wall. Turning his head forwards, his eyes told him that the wall was two feet wide, a little over six feet tall and appeared to be wrapped entirely in black leather. Taking a step backwards, the gears in his mind ground together in a tangle of astonishment and near-panic. The man before him (and surely it was a man, if very oddly dressed) definitley hadn't been there a moment ago. A long black leather surcoat of some kind clung to his angular frame like a burial shroud, gloves encased his hands, feet shod in tall, cuffed boots. A leather wrap curved around the lower half of his face; above that, what seemed to be a lacquered mask concealed his features from view beneath the broad brim of a battered black hat. Where there should have been eyes behind the mask... ...was that a feral glint of yellow-amber?
"I'm sorry... ...m'lord?", stammered the market patron. "I didn't see you there." The altogether disturbing presence before him tilted its head slightly to the side, coldly appraising him. "I am not your lord, and you did not see me there because I was not there." The marketgoer shuddered, gripped by a chill that wasn't physical but seemed to wreathe his soul in a sharp caul of frost at the sound of that voice. There was no animation in it, neither mirth nor anger, no life . Without another word, the man simply stepped around him and strode quietly off in the opposite direction; moving through the press of the crowd without touching a single one, a feat near like dancing in the rain without getting wet. The market patron took a moment while his heart began beating regularly instead of trying to gallop out through his ribs, fear subsiding into a vague and confused dread as the strange personage moved slowly but surely away from him.