The Day after the Ball: Folly

[Dulcie]

The pain had receeded slowly in the time she spent staring up at the sky. It wasn't gone by any means, but she was breathing and awake, and that was perhaps both good and bad. Carefully, with no weight upon her wrists, she dragged herself to her knees.

She lifted her hands to feel at the back of the bridle, remembering that once there had been a lock there. With every movement of her hands she winced or groaned, the slightest turn of her wrist rubbing the iron nail against the pierced hole of her wrist. In the end, her efforts were rewarded.

It seemed that the iron of the bridle had cracked. Perhaps from a fall if they had thrown her into the pit, or maybe it had been from quick, shoddy workmanship with such a thing crafted in a hurry for her imprisonment. In either case, the crack was there and it was an opportunity to get out of the blasted thing. She pulled with her fingers, finding that even with a little prying the metal continued to crack and pull apart, giving her some relief from the thing's presence, but it still wasn't enough. It required something stronger, something that could offer more force.

She searched her surroundings for something that would help and elected to create a lever out of a sturdy looking piece of wood on the ground. The effort took hours, and by the time the bridle fell away from her face her arms were covered with her own blood, all oozed from the nail holes in her wrists. She had overcome one challenge, and with a somewhat triumphant sound she'd collapse back down into unconciousness, completely unaware of anything going on at the other side of the labyrinth.

[catch]

and what was a Labyrinth to he?
mirrors
illusion
when he, himself, were an illusion,
tangibly intangible.

when great strides could carry him up,
over,
hedgegrows and wicked plants
who, sang, all the same
for he was Grand.

for a time, he would not mind
this Virgil
leaving Glenn Burnie in Aumdathus' grasp,
a boot-black
a murderer
silver, winking eyes.

he could always find them again.

for now, there was a Storyteller,
and she lay, passed out from blood,
exertions
a want of water, a want of kindness
for Golben was no kindness.

so old. so old.
he had recoiled, many times, in horror
at the age upon her face. the promise
of time, the promise of flesh
to grow old, to sag, to have
a name carved in hands fade
into baggy pads of fat between
skeletal hands.

but this was not Catch, not truly
and she was changed, to hair as red
as blood.
he stood by her, for a moment, and then
he lay
as if she were virgin, he lay,
foal-like, curled about her
like a serpent.

in silver warmth, he waited,
mad eyes distant, and
for Glenn Burnie, as his face
became a mirror, and
as Audmathus followed, or did not
he muttered, only,
Temperance.

[Rance]

...his face
became a mirror, and
as Audmathus [did not follow]
he muttered, only,
Temperance.

He watched as Temperance, like an ascended being, like a god, defied the rules; up over the hedgerows, the dangling mirrors, the brilliant sparkle of thorn-tips and the choking tangles of bloodied vines. The presence was a floating, leaping, hovering mass, but moments later, it--

--was gone.

He turned, then, back to Glenn Burnie, and for the first time, caught his first glimpse of their row in the maze of Golben. There were mirrors set here and there like plaques hanging in the vines, angled across from one another with such precision that one might have thought they could simply pass through each mirror as they reflected impossible hallways and paths that cut straight through the overgrown hedges.

"I was responsible for a great many things, Glenn Burnie," the drow said, his heels crunching through withered grass. "The books speak of them, of me, of the black demon that convinced a handful of Myrken Wood's finest to carve out their own eyes simply for an opportunity to flay my flesh. I was responsible for a great many things, even as a drow male," he repeated, before lofting high a hand of black, mottled skin, to indicate the sky, the towering hedges, the mirrors and their repetitious alternatives.

"But this. This Golben," he praised, "is a feat of engineering that only humans could develop. Equal parts torturous, self-righteous, and yet entirely disconnected from the the death it breeds. It is easy. You should be commended."

There was a distaste in his voice, a curdled, soured absence of satisfaction -- his lip curled, the rims of shattered teeth becoming visible for only a moment. He approached Glenn Burnie, but instead of offering a hand to assist him in standing, the night-carved blade swept out--

--and Shadowdancer's humming edge tucked itself just beneath the governor's chin. The sword's spider-leg bend was a single ribbon that connected the two of them so they might look upon one another over it.

Harrowed, Glenn said. Too much emotion. Words that eschewed responsibility.

"Find your feet," Audmathus said. "And take care with your words, Glenn Burnie, for having been so recently gelded by your lady, it is commonplace to let your tongue get out of hand."

[Glenn]

Burnie's headache was worse. Crashing face-first into a completely unexpected mirror hadn't helped. Having a mothballed drow villain sticking a sword at his throat certainly wasn't helping either. Then there was the matter of Catch or not-Catch or Temperance or the coalescing maggots that did not let him ride them (which was sort of a mixed bag when one thought about it). If he had just give minutes with a few of his Inquisitors, he could work out both the means and the drive behind all of that, but he had neither minutes nor Inquisitors right now. Audmathus currently did not seem the theorizing sort.

It was, perhaps, time to reluctantly admit a few things about his situation. Only a few though.

In the meantime, he would work with what he had, the drow's words. He remained seated, continuing to mouth off no matter the immediate danger to the very organs he used to do the said mouthing. "For some reason, no one wants to write books about recent Myrken history. It's hard to get accounts from corpses, apparently. As for the records, those burnt up with the old Meetinghouse. That was at Kerrak's hand, and his insanity, in part, at adorable little Faeryl's." Despite the lightness of his words, some distaste did show through there. "I don't even think you can take credit for the destruction of the documents that would tell us exactly what you could take credit for. You'll forgive us for not naming the most forboding part of the Woods after you, Audmathus. If you help me get out, which, yes, I know you said you wouldn't, I'll be sure to rename a particularly gnarly stump after you though. Governor's honor."

There, he'd caught his breath and regained his bearings. How one could regain one's breath through talking alone was a mystery on the same level as those coalescing maggots, but that was Glenn Burnie, wasn't it? The drowlord complimented him on Golben and all he could do was nod, or not nod as it was, considering where that blade sat. He nodded with his eyes. "The woman who you heard scream," he began, this time without the rapidity of his previous spiel, "is a storyteller. She brings her words to life. I understand certain things about narratives, friend," and why not? Why not call Audmathus that. He was correct on one level. They were not within the normal confines of society. Even the rules that Glenn usually bent and manipulated did not apply here. "Action and consequence are two of them. This is consequence for my actions. The Labyrinth was consequence, you understand. It, in itself, was not action. Me being here is consequence. That corpse? That mirror? Those screams? Those are actions, but not my own.

"I am going to have a very long talk with a certain illusionist when I get out of here," and now, finally, he was starting to his feet, "and I will get out." He was about to stand even before Audmathus' words. The man hadn't tracked him all the way here to kill him so pointlessly. Burnie knew that much. "You seem to keep mentioning failure and gelding," perhaps a small glance on his way up; some things were known, "what I deserve, and all these such things as if there was a finality to them. There's not. You're also extrapolating from a limited amount of information. I know it when I see it. I do it all the time." On his feet now if the ruined man hadn't run him through on sheer principle or to shut him up. Now he extended a hand. "I'm not sure we have time for false assumptions though. If we're going to do this, let's do it properly. I am Glenn Burnie, and despite the circumstances, it is at least interesting to meet you. I was always disappointed I never had the opportunity to previously," even if it was to destroy him once and for all. "if you don't mind, I have a question I ask every drow when I meet him or her; I would ask it to you."

[Rance]

AND WHY [for what reason, rationale, purpose] DO YOU WISH TO SPEAK [to discuss, to confer] WITH THIS HUMAN, BETRAYER.

The handmaiden's voice was an insert in his mind, an invader; instead of speaking directly, it pieced together its thunderous demands out of his very own thoughts. It strung them together, occasionally questioning the choices of similar words -- language was, after all, a bane to a being that had no need for speech.

"I wish to give him something. A gift," he said. "Something I've no longer any use for."

IT WILL COST. I SHALL BRING [transport, relocate] YOU TO HIM. FOR A PRICE. A BOON.

"I have paid many of those."

Shadowdancer lingered for a few more moments at Glenn Burnie's throat, contemplating the benefits or dangers of interrupting the words with blood. He'd no empathy for Glenn Burnie, for these matters of action and consequence; his commendation of Golben had been a quiet rebuke of it, a sarcasm -- it was human, after all, to have no care to look into the eyes of the dead. It was easy, as he had said. And ease connoted fragility.

The sword turned away. His hand shot forward to take Glenn Burnie's own. In such close proximity, under the fogs and darkness of Golben, the drow's flesh was not the black of deep-earth stones, but a withered, hollow gray. As he took the governor's hand, the white and black marbles held there were pressed into Glenn's fist. He drew the man up to his feet, leaving him with those baubles.

"I know what you know, Glenn Burnie. About this Storyteller, about the ebbing whisper of war beyond the borders. About the child-eater, about the time you spent in a place where your skin was the only hint of light for miles. The books have yet to be written, friend. Not about me -- they'd not know how to spell the name -- but about you. About the exhaustive training you went through to become a man.

"I know how Ariane fights," he said, the word wielded as if it were the name of an old friend. "Should you draw that blade on me, I will read her tutelage in your motions. The days of it. The hours of it. All scratched like little scars in your muscles. You are a man of words and analysis alone, Glenn Burnie."

A warning. If their weapons chose to speak to one another, the dark elf -- despite his age, his slowness, and a castration of the talents he once possessed -- would prevail.

A truth.

Faeryl, the governor said. The dark elf dragged a line through the bloody dirt with the point of his blade.

"The Matron is gone, Glenn Burnie. I was her action; I was, in turn, her consequence. You know how these things work. What she wrought, she wrought with me at my behest. When I abandoned her, and abandon I did, she became a farce. As did I."

He passed by Glenn, striding along the hedgerows and mirrors, refusing to stay still any longer. His ragged cloak snapped around his ankles and sagged from his shoulders and elbows like the rotten membrane of withered, broken wings.

I have a question I ask every drow when I meet him or her; I would ask it to you.

"Ask me. I would despise being left out of your collection."

[Glenn]

Marbles.

"I've been looking for these, you know." The words simply flowed out from between his lips. In a moment, Audmathus would mention Ariane, would mention her tutelage. Fighting was the least of what he learned from Ariane Emory, however. If she had been there, if she had witnessed this moment, it would perhaps be minutes before her laughter would end. That was, of course, if she'd ever heard the phrase before. Bleak humor was a strong point. Colloquial metaphor was not.

It meant Glenn smiled when the raggedy drow invoked her name. The smile had already been close to him, after all. "Training. Years with Ariane Emory, friend, years with her and i was still not good enough. I needed something more, something more dangerous, something more deadly, something quicker. I spent years with Ariane Emory but I spent a year on top of that learning to fight one of your kind. She wasn't worth the effort. She was a child. Jirai, however, was not." What would he see if they matched blades? It would be more than just Ariane Emory's tutelage. "Perhaps someday? I would tell you if you were better than the Duke or not." Didn't Audmathus understand? Glenn Burnie was dangerous to nothing more than he was dangerous to a truth.

Someday they would write the books? For someone who thought so much about the future, he'd rarely considered that. "Someday they'll write a book and someday everyone in Myrken Wood will be able to read it. One of those two things matters to me far more than the other," but not the way Rhaena would have it, not that. Without the hard work nothing had any meaning.

"Do you know what your greatest weakness is, Audmathus? Your kind's greatest weakness?" Another added to his collection and this one rather poignantly placed on this very topic. "You lack empathy. You simply cannot understand other people. You are incapable and thus you're helpless to affect anything you can't stab, twist, or terrify. The question is this: are you simply born that way or do they rear it into you in that dark, dank hole? Years later now, I have a theory. No one's ever heard it before. We'll hear your answer first though, i think."

[Rance]

"A theory," he said. "Are all humans as observant and as scientific as you, Glenn Burnie?"

But the drow did not stop his movement, putting distance between them; Glenn Burnie could be hardened wax all he desired, he could be the gibbous moon of philosophy, but Audmathus knew the spirit of Golben. Perhaps not its specifics, or its secrets -- he knew places like it, where men became half-spiders and schools where masters engaged their students in murderous games of survival -- but this place was rendered of tightened muscle and readied blades; it was blood and conflict, hungry for the death of those that wandered like beetles amid its tangles.

"Your supposition assumes we are all the same ilk," he said, turning fully around to toss his words between the deadly branches and the knotty hedgewalls. "You confuse the lack of empathy with an incubation of misanthropy, Glenn Burnie. It is injected into our blood; females kill the third-born male children and whole family lines are murdered secretly in the night.

"What we do by blades and violence, you do by sedition and dissent. Just look at your lady. Just look around you."

He touched his collarbone with his free hand, as if trying to feel somewhere, somewhere, for the heart that beat beneath the scarred flesh and the moldering robe. Then, he leaned to the side and darted off at the intersection of hedgerows, veering to the left and vanishing down an awaiting row--

--for if Glenn Burnie wanted to remain in one spot, he could; Audmathus, however, would move. His voice echoed against the guts of Golben, smooth as glass and edged like the gut-hungry brambles.

"But make no mistake, Glenn; humans and drow, they're dissimilar. They may act the same at times, they may mimic one another's notable qualities. But you cannot force an ant to understand a worm; you cannot say they are one in the same."

The words that came next were not vibrating sound, but thought -- simple thought, lanced like a weakling spell through the mesh of the hedges, bushes, glass, and human remains that littered Golben. The whisper was a prying invader, an untrustworthy agent. It was a nagging contemplation, a subdued doubt that scrabbled its way out of the mud inside Burnie's conscience and clapped its hands to the shores of his mind; there, the drow's voice was calm and quiet, more matter-of-fact.

Except you and I, Glenn Burnie. We're quite alike. Breathtakingly so.

And except for that voice, unless he chose to follow, the Governor of Myrken Wood was alone.

[Glenn]

"Most humans are not me, I'm afraid to admit."

Burnie started after Audmathus eventually. Why not? Let him walk into the damned mirrors. This place was a mapmaker's nightmare. It was a governor's lapse. Rigid though? No, it had been made wild and wild things could be tamed. Just look at Myrken Wood. He'd even start after the voice when his companion disappeared. The drow was still watching, the drow was still listening; he hadn't come all this way to leave just like that. He was here and best he should listen, for Burnie had much to say.

"All my supposition assumes is sentience." His tone was not stubborn so much as matter-of-fact. "If that is the only dividing line, I suppose one must examine whether a higher level of sentience exists, some sort of omniscience. If it does, you and your kind certainly don't have it, rendering all of this moot, save for in the most academic terms. Still, we have time to kill, right?

"So then, there is additional knowledge, additional senses, and additional experience. Additional knowledge is merely information. Anyone can gather that and likely gain more in the act of than those who are simply born with it, which you are not, might I add. Your senses are more attuned than ours, yes, but I think that is a distraction for most of you, a crutch for some. Do you seek out my heartbeat with your ears to know when I lie? Most of what you see in the darkness only provides you with additional information in the moment, not additional insight in general. As for your experience, your longevity is tempered by the chaos in which you live your lives and, far, far more than that, as the very nature of your society is repressive and ugly, none of you mature. A drowess may be fifty years older than me but act five years younger. All becomes relative when you are inwards looking only. Faeryl and yourself had the right mind of it. Through interacting with those different than you, you could have grown far stronger than those who remained home. Sensation would have come more quickly and meaning would have become compressed and thus expanded in your minds." He managed all this without breathing more than once, without pausing to gather his words. They simply came. What chills could Audmathus send down his spine in the face of this lecture? "That it didn't do a damn bit of good for either of you brings us back to nature opposed to nurture.

"As for the rest, you contradict yourself. Are we the same ilk or not?" As he spoke he seemed to grow stronger, energy returning to him. He was literally talking his headache away. "First you say no, then yes, the no again. All sentient beings have wants and desires. One could list them for a drow as easily for a human. It ends up as a matter of classification, Audmathus, and we are more than capable of that. You, on the other hand, are blatantly incapable to even try. The question is this: is it willful dismissal or is it involuntary?"

Maybe some annoyance now. It was nice to have a more tangible audience. He hadn't even made it to his own theory yet. All he needed was a few seconds for that too. "You think you know what I went through down there, this worm that dug under your ant hill, or this ant that marched through your worm hole; I'm not sure which of us is which in your metaphor. You don't. I do. All of your nurturing misanthropy was not able to shatter my empathy. It is my nature when it is not yours. No, what it managed instead was to corrode through my sympathy, a different matter altogether."

[Rance]

As Glenn rounded the corner, the hedges on either side of him narrowed into the far distance. The ground was flat, a path that was patched with cobbles and dessicated leaves. Far above them, the sky was a fogged blanket, and beneath it, Golben was set into the bowl of a rockface, the scoured shale outcroppings that towered high and long on the distant edges of the labyrinth's crown looming like godless sentinels. Ancient rivers once flowed through the land where Golben now stood; the labyrinth, the hedgerow maze, the mirror-spackled challenge that comprised the land now a curse scarring the face of history and times past.

Audmathus stood like a statue in the center of the path, his chin inclined, his blood-droplet eyes absorbing the grand image of the crater's stony edges bending above them.

"We stand in the palm of the universe, Glenn Burnie," he said, his words offered without turning, never taking his gaze away from the sprawling sight of Golben's crater walls, "and yet, you still speak to yourself as though the world exists only between your ears.

"I contradict myself, Glenn; but this place--" He raised high a boot-black hand, as if he could merely scrape the whole of the world into it and display it to a child like a captured insect, "--is not nurturing; it is the opposite of the humanity to which you ascribe. Is this the unbreakable empathy that has filled all the empty holes where your sympathy used to be? Theorize, Glenn Burnie. Tell me your theories. Pile them upon me. But whether you are worm or ant, whichever you feel empowers you more, the crux of the issue is this:

"Your lady discarded you here. Your town has forgotten you. You were willfully dismissed. Do you want to keep teaching me the ways of the world while you stand in its bowels, entirely severed from everything that defines you?"

He shifted his grasp on Shadowdancer. He turned the black sword, held out the hilt so that the governor could safely grip it. The pommel was skirted with knots of silk and the tang was viced between a smoothed, ivory handle.

"Take it," Audmathus said. "Tell me, with all your empathy, what you feel when you hold it."

[Glenn]

Many Months Ago

To a man who had just spent agonizing weeks in the Remedium covered in festering wounds and never-to-be-healed burns, it was almost pleasant. Not every day, but almost so, the motherly old woman would come to visit. He would welcome her with a smile, would sit her down, would fetch her some wine, and they would get to business. The deal was simple: together they crafted a story that would save his life, that would restore him. In exchange, he would tell her a new story whenever she called upon him. Simplicity itself, it was, and worth it, so very worth it.

The man in black began with the fables of his homeland, tales of brave sailors on long, lost journeys plying their cleverness against demigods and monsters, of heroes climbing snow-covered peaks to do battles with giant birds and to find treasures of gold. Then it was the tales of his own youth, some adventurous, some tragic; tales of his family: of criminals and politics and of the intersection between. The days went on and he ran out of fictional tales, of tales of his own youth, of his homeland's history and culture. She was not overly demanding but she was constant, a stream that would wear away a stone day after day after day. The need to gather tales, to tell them to her increased, slowly at first, but more and more and more. His deepest secrets became fodder to feed the need. Soon he was offering her everything he knew, his secrets, those he learned while working under Burnie, Myrken's.

In the middle of that span, when the hunger was bad but not yet all consuming, when he was just distracted enough by the pangs, he told her this tale:

Once upon a time there was a girl and there was a boy. The boy talked to much, yes? Words and words and words. They came into his head. They came out of his mouth, but sometimes they were almost clever so it was almost okay. Other times he got kicked and stomped on so it evens out. He meant well and was curious. She was curious too. She didn't talk so much but she smiled behind a veil and was a good person. Sometimes she was sad because another boy had done her wrong as other boys tended to do. He went to a cold, cold place and forgot about her. Sometimes, we only see what's right in front of us, we males especially, but all of us. You're not any better, nonnina. I know.

So there is the boy and the girl and they are busybodies, getting in everyone's business. It is, let us say, a common interest. The girl burns bright, bright like the sun, which makes it all the sadder that she got hurt by the old boy in the cold place. The new boy, though, he's drawn in, drawn in too close and it burns him, burns him to the core, burns him so much that they can't be together without him being hurt. You see when they are really together, they are closer than talking, closer than a kiss, closer than anything. He knows her heart. She knows his. It is bliss. It is bliss and it is killing him. So everyone around them rise up, not wanting to see the boy and the girl hurt, and make it so they can't be together.

One day a woman with skin like night and breasts like very large melons comes to them. They know she is a witch. They know she is evil, but they are young and they are in love. The witch, she claims to want a new start and offers them magical rings that would let them be together. They take them and they live happily ever after, proving that people should be given a second chance. The end.

Except for this is Myrken Wood and no story ends like that here. No, no. It goes like this. The rings are cursed. The girl becomes more and more nasty and wicked, more and more like the witch. The boy becomes more and more oblivious to it, is cursed to enjoy it more than the good, curious, brave girl she'd been. Then, when the girl is at her worst, the Witch comes back to cackle at her vengeance and cuts the girl's hand right off. The boy and the girl? They're never happy again, not really.

The lesson to be learned then, it is simple:

Never trust a drow bearing gifts.

The thought passes through Burnie's mind plainly. He'd followed Audmathus, had listened to him, had heard him say some of the same things again and again, heard him speak of the nature of Golben, had heard him admit to contradiction, had heard him comment on Burnie's theory of empathy and sympathy.

And then finally, he witnessed the sword held out like a gift.

He smiled. "Maybe. Maybe I want to teach you." He sat down before Audmathus in the middle of the pathway. "Maybe I want to hear my voice, even here." He looked up at the drow. "Maybe I'll take the sword.

"But we talk first. Sit down. The shrieking storyteller and honestly terrifying unicorn creature can wait. I think I'm ready to talk." It was a strange feeling; seeing the sword had brought him full circle though. "It all started with the rings. It all started with my weakness. I was a boy and I was greedy and I was needy. And then I grew strong and rigid and unyielding, no matter what it cost me or anyone else. I wouldn't be weak again. People died because I wouldn't be weak again. " Jirai again, part of the cost of his strength. He paid it in so many ways, but others did as well. "It was too late then, though. The damage was done. Revenge makes for such inspiration, but it never fixes anything, does it?"

He'd mentioned Golben, the nature of it, again and again and again and again. "This wasn't my empathy, Audmathus. It was my sympathy. It wasn't my understanding of others, it was my emotion, my feeling. My understanding hadn't been wiped from me in Underdark, but my heart had been. At that point you and I weren't much different, no. We just had different drives. Even so, it was my sympathy that was dangerous. It was bottled up, stored deep, detached from the rest of me. When it worked its way out, it was erratic, built up pressure that festered and spoiled. When it spewed forth, it was as lapses. Either I released now and again or it would destroy me. This place? It was one of those releases. A piss from the bladder of my heart, Audmathus. Then, not unsympathetic, Burnie would look to the drow, young, honest if not earnest. "I'm sorry, you know, sorry that you'll never know the feeling of it. It's wonderful and terrible all at once. You deserve that pain and the joy of it might do you some good."

[Rance]

He never touched Shadowdancer. He looked upon it, of course, with the kind of wonder and and wariness that such artifacts inspired. But the governor refused its bone handle and its jagged blade, its perfect balance and war-addled figure. So when Glenn Burnie began to speak--

But we talk first--

--he turned the drow-blade in his palm so that it jutted like a spike from the bottom of the first, and then drove it down into the dirt to stand upright, a watchful eight-eyes acting as sentinel beside them. It was not the only blade the dark elf bore; on his other hip, there was a neglected sword, a twin to Shdaowdancer in almost every way. Its sheath was worn and the leather moldered with crawling fungus. Blood and wetness had scared the leather and brass fixtures over the years, and one might wonder if it'd ever been drawn at all.

Revenge makes for such inspiration, but it never fixes anything, does it?

Glenn Burnie wove a tale. The governor lunged into it, demanding attention he did not entirely deserve -- he was a broken man telling tales, a storyteller all his own. Yet, the drow crouched down in front of him like a patient child, his gray face a pale blackstone and his wiry hair a spiderweb veil across his cheeks. The red eyes never blinked -- instead, they cut, they stared, not impatient, but wanting--

Wanting a point, a moral, a purpose for this hesitation in a place that took its every wheezing breath with the purpose of driving mad those lost to its trenches.

Either I released now and again or it would destroy me. This place? It was one of those releases.

"And that," Audmathus reasoned, "is what continuously fascinates creatures like me, Glenn Burnie. You mistake our sadistic qualities for mere hatred. As boredom. You see it as violence. We see it as experimentation. We celebrate ourselves by emerging, raiding your towns, ruining your farms. We become the little fears reaching out to grab the ankles of children as they hang them off their bed.

"Does it work," he asked. "We mean to be, as you say, a pressure that festers and spoils. Because we do not have that. We maim, slaughter, and antagonize because it is our immediate release. The emotion starts here--" he tapped his divoted brow, "--and instantly manifests here--" a touch to the hilt of Shadowdancer, "--so that we may be rid of it.

"Humans fascinate us, Glenn Burnie. So we push and prod and destroy because we wish to see, if like ants, they scuttle away in predictable patterns. And they do. Except for here. Except for Myrken Wood."

You deserve that pain and the joy of it might do you some good.

When he smiled, it was weightless and honest. Glenn Burnie knew smiles like those. Perhaps he had worn one like it many times before, amid the Council, amid the commoners.

In the presence of Rhaena Olwak.

"Who are you to assume I do not know that pain, Glenn Burnie," he said.

[Glenn]

"I was like a drow." It wasn't necessarily a hard thing to say. "I became like you to defeat you. I became like you to survive you. I became like you to escape you. When I came back, my I had been honed into a curved blade to slice through Myrken Wood. I was the best of it. I was the worst of what you could be. It worked. The perfect chemistry for an imperfect place."

Audmathus was crouching and it was a shame Burnie hadn't been able to go through his pack yet. There might have been some nice snacks for the two of them. "Experimentation. Like a child experiments with the sun and an insect, yes? That's what you mean. Nothing is learned in the process except for 'can i do it?' and 'just how powerful am I?' Meaningless. Experimentation without growth. Experimentation to confirm what you already believe. Experimentation without application. Prove me wrong, Audmathus. Tell me that you were behind my plight all along, that you wanted to see what would happen if your methods and drive were given to someone with the spirit of betterment and progress, of creating something, not destroying it. Tell me that you wanted to take the results of this and apply them to your own home, to create a new age. Tell me any of that and I will believe you. I will applaud you."

"No? Shame, that." A clap, sudden, without warning. "The great drow experiment. If we kill people, if we maim them, if we make spiders burst from their lips, will they fear us? We should build an academy to properly glorify your world-changing lines of scientific inquiry."

From his sitting position Burnie began tapping his foot. Tap. Tap. Tap. Then, a look of distaste; he stopped. No, there was no going back, was there? "You suggest you're different. I think you may be. I think you've gone through an anvil. Ariane has a way of saying it," a small smile creeping towards his lip. "Tempering. Tell me. Tell me the whole of it."

[Rance]

"An academy," he asked, voice teeming with false appreciation. "You would build one to honor me? There's no need."

He raised high his palms, like Golben itself was an entire planet that he might lift upon his shoulders.

"You already have."

He clapped his hands down to his knees and lowered his voice, as if fearing that the coiled hedges might hear the words that the human and the dark elf spoke to one another.

"This place is the dark elf in you, Glenn Burnie. I never needed to have hope for your betterment or prosperity, as this is how you have promised it to your people. Should your citizens commit atrocities, you -- and your lady -- perform them in return; you sentence them to a game of survival, brutality, and blood. You tease them with a web-thin ribbon of freedom -- What if I surpass all of Golben's challenges? -- and murder them at the hands of the creatures and traps you've imprisoned here along with them.

"I was always honest in my violence, Glenn Burnie. Honest to those I victimized, honest to myself. But this place? It's a wonderfully-played lie."

He stood, cupping his palm around the ivory handle of his sword. He wrenched it out of the earth and squinted along its edge, measuring its tilt, its angle, before he grabbed Shadowdancer by its blade and thrust the handle toward the governor of Myrken Wood.

Tell me. Tell me the whole of it.

"Don't presume to know what my aims were in years past, Glenn, because you will be wrong. Faeryl gelded me like your lady did to you. She reminded me that I was nothing more than a drow male," the words offered in the very same tones that Burnie had wielded earlier, "and that is all I am. A male who knows what it means to reach the height of power, and then have it stripped from him like so many rotten clothes by someone more cunning and predictable. And now so do you."

He dropped Shadowdancer on the ground in front of his compatriot.

"I congratulate you," Audmathus said, "as you move along the path toward being something more horrific, treacherous, and destructive to your people than I ever could be."

[Glenn]

The governor smiled. It was hard not to in the face of Audmathus. "You are the second most persistent drow I ever met, and you get more credit than the first since all she wanted to do was bed me. Odd duck. I've never seen any other female do most of her thinking with her right breast. Maybe we'd come up with a name for that in the academy we're building to you. That sounds like the appropriate level of scholarship."

Gelding. Honesty. A sword and congratulations.

Glenn refused not to smile. Audmathus hadn't budged, so he would have to. "Do you understand why I say what I say? It's a secret, but I'll tell you." It ruined the joke to explain it but compromise was necessary here at the end of the world, at the end of his world and far, far past the end of the drow's. "As a general rule, unless I'm holding all the cards and thus can be gracious, I refuse to take seriously anyone more pompous than myself." Then as almost an afterthought. "I used to get punched quite a bit, you know, but if you do it consistently over time, you become strangely untouchable. More than that, great cosmic entities rush to tell you the meanings of life just to try to make you think that they're important and worth some sort of matter-of-fact respect," then, as an afterthought, his smile softened a little. "Hey, don't think that in me telling you that, I was angling for respect because you refuse to properly take the bait. We just don't have all day here. I have other places to be, so I thought we'd speed through the usual preliminaries. You also seem to be itching to leave and I'd rather not have that yet."

The absentee Governor stretched his leg out, still in his sitting position, trying to draw the sword closer without actually reaching for it or moving. Unsurprisingly, he continued to talk. "See, it's the persistence I find surprising. Here you are insisting that you're a ruin of a man, gelded, just a lowly drow male, a memory, an afterthought, a footnote of a footnote of ages past, yesterday's news, a blanched skeleton of bones and viscera, rotting out in the sun for years with no real meat left for the carrion-eaters to even pick at. All that and more." For someone who had just been told not to presume, he was doing a good deal of that. He wore it well, at least. "Or less. Yet you're so insistent on this place, on me, on my failures relative to your own. It' s interesting. I wonder, Audmathus, is it just that you look for company in your wretched misery? An ant for your little, maimed spider to find a kindred despair in? Or is there some spark left in you? If I am dragged down to your level, you might climb up once again, either by stepping upon my head or by watching me pull myself back to my feet?"

His tone changed quickly, suddenly. It became less inquisitive and more certain. He lifted a hand to the drow. "One," a finger shot up. "This place is no lie. There are cells by the entrance. There are guards at the door," or there would be when it was fully operational. "All of the worst creatures in Myrken escape eventually. This delays them and weakens them. If they reach the entrance, we'll slam them back down. It's a false hope, but we're quite open about that. In the end, they only lie to themselves. Two," another finger, "you were defeated. You were gelded. You were made to be a just a lowly drow male again. I was not. I was hit on the back of the head and tossed here. I've been here for less than an hour. I woke up to you. I've already gained myself a well made magic drow sword. Another two or three hours in here and I might learn how to fly or breathe fire. Give me a week and I'll be pissing gold, more so than usual, that is. Give me a month and I'll and I'll be the fucking king of Amasynia. I'll make you my port-reeve. Do you know anything about the sea? No one I know does so you'll be as good as any."

Glenn closed all of his fingers into a fist. "Three, and this is the last, I look back, Audmathus," he shook his his head. For a moment he shut his eyes. It would be a good time for that punch, really. "I see what I've done. Good and ill, and I am lucky, extremely lucky, in that some of what I must do is so clear. I need to get out. That is clear. i need to take back what I lost. That is clear. Everything after that?" He exhaled. He opened his eyes. He shook his head. "I don't know. It's just a good thing I have clear tasks to hold on to now. Let us hope I can show your level of persistence when it comes to them."

[Dulcie]

Grawnya had no idea if it was hours or days that she had laid out on the cool ground, her body trying to recover from the pain and the blood loss. She breathed in, and she could feel it then, some of her stories still here in this place, close enough to feed off of, at least it would be if it weren't for those damned nails in her wrists. Blood still curled it's way down her arms from the wounds, though it had slowed considerably. Perhaps it had just been hours then.

She felt the presence of another near her, curled about her in a serpentine fashion, and for a moment she would be still, trying to understand what it was that had cuddled up next to her before she decided to make any sudden movements.