Echoes of a Past Life (Closed)

[Wrenmae]

Spring 42, 511 AV It was not fate that brought him from the bloody streets of Sunberth. No higher hand guided his path down the winding root-snarled paths into the wilds. It was not by the will of a god that he abide here, here the creak and moan of timber, the creaking of old wood. As Wrenmae would always have it, nothing brought him to the woman, it was a coincidence born of nothing. Curiosity’s muse and nothing more. Of course, in closer circles the storyteller would always pause after these assertions, set his mug to the tavern tabletop and stare into its depths, looking in that briny bottom for answers to his own doubts, his own malformed conclusions. He couldn’t say it was a god or goddess that led him out there that day, but something pulled him…deep in the core of his being. Something spoke to the storyteller and brought him into the forest, beyond the protection of what he deemed safe. It was that he feared, that Weaver had been the most sane of them all…that they were all dancing to the strings of some grand narrator, pushing a story along like a tired old cart, manned by a mule and an old blind woman, always to some inconceivable end. But at the time, it was only curiosity that led him to push past the fronds of leaves and low-hanging moss to see the little wagon pulled along inch by agonizing inch on the back of piebald mule. He was Shroud then, back when he had names for the sides of him, and that opportunist had looked on the slow progress as something of a godsend, fate had delivered a poorly prepared traveler to his hands. Not that he was intent on placating Cade with a wagon and a dying mule, but supplies were in demand and everything had a price attatched. So he came, sliding down the steep embankment to the beaten road, fingers thumping along the hilt of his long dagger as he came to stop in front of the wagon. The old mule looked at him with bleary familiarity, stopping only a minute after registering him. The rider, a haggard cloak hung low over a hunched figure, moved only in small increments, as if barely alive. Shroud marked the old hands that held the reins, veiny things of age and antiquity. Long nails, yellowed in age yet clean of dirt and debris, let the reigns fall softly and reached up to remove the hood around her head.

[Wrenmae]

Tangled white hair in snarls cascaded down to obscure the puckered skin of an old woman, sightless eyes a foggy white, milky cataracts that stared straight into nothing, beyond everything, and yet still seemed to somehow perceive. Shroud was taken aback for a moment, but cleared his throat and chuckled, “Good noon to you, woman, a bit off the beaten path aren’t you? Do you travel alone in such a condition?” She was silent at first, then answered with a coughing laughter, bubbling through her chapped lips and resounding with surprising timbre. “No, no, boy,” she said, transfixing those sightless orbs on him, “I’m here for you. Kept a poor old woman waiting now didn’t you?” She tutted quietly, waggling a crooked finger at him. “Rude, I don’t have forever, you know.” Shroud let his surprise trickle out of his breathing, sighing out the shock of the reply in one long continuous breath. She unnerved him, those sightless eyes and knowing tone. Something about her felt wrong, different, enticing and yet reproachful all at once. She must have been waiting on another…that was the only solution. He had come upon her first and what luck it was that she mistook him for her contact. “My apologies,” he said quietly, approaching the mule, “The woods are not as easy to navigate as I’d have hoped. Shall I lead you to your destination?” It was disturbing the way her eyes followed him, as though they saw…although they clearly did not. She grinned, gap-toothed and bleeding from the gums. “My destination has been reached,” she said softly, holding out her hands, “If you would humor me a moment, boy, let me see you with my hands.” Shroud clicked his tongue against his teeth in displeasure. If she knew her contact, than feeling his own face would only reveal him for a fraud. Well, it was no matter, he intended to rob her anyways. He stepped toward the wagon, checking her body for the outlines of weapons, the scars of reimancy initiation on her fingers, telltale marks of danger before submitting himself to her. Everything in his mind screamed against allowing her access to his face, but there was a curious part of him...one that almost craved to know how the blind saw, what features they focused on, how they built faces in their minds. Would she show fear? Anger? He reached up and took one of her trembling hands, placing it against his cheek and letting the other guide down to feel his skin as well. For a moment, it was only old flesh over young skin, the vague sensation of leather, silence, her grunts and murmurs as she 'saw' him with the tough of her fingers. Finally, her hands trailed to the sides of his head, over both ears, gentle at first...and then she spoke, "Ah, so it is you, Wrenmae. Good."

[Wrenmae]

There is a certain moment in all encounters when one has a grasp on the danger they face. A sickening weight plummets into the pit of ones stomach, a swallowed mess of anxiety and instinct that sizzles against the stomach acids, boils, rocks, and waits to be resolved. Shroud's first reaction was to yank his head away from the hands, but his head was stuck fast. The frail old woman no longer was wrapped in the seeming of age and frailty. Her textured skin warped back into smooth flesh, her tangled hair straightened and ran black with lustrous light, her milky eyes remained so, but became somehow sharper, younger. A smaller woman held him now, easily in the breathtaking years of her pinnacle appearance, she possessed an unnatural power which held the young mage in a vice. Shroud's hand scrabbled at his blade, yanking it from his sheathe to bring up into her body. While his hand found the pommel, the draw was slow, distant. It seemed the faster his body commanded him to move, the slower the world around him got. Lethargy, like black tendrils, moved to constrict his muscles and a sense of weary hopelessness settled in his mind. It was strange, so overwhelmingly strange. It felt as though his head was being emptied of facts, of tacit understanding and raw instinct. Like he was being controlled. It came to him slowly, a realization dampened with hopeless enlightenment. Hypnotism. The bitch had hypnotized him. The robe around her had fallen loose in her transformation, revealing the long milky expanse of her arm, the black stretched glyphs traced along her skin. They glowed with dull activation and Shroud cursed his overconfidence feebly. The Hypnotism against his own was quick and precise. She knew her target...knew from some unimaginable study, and had used glyping and physical touch to deliver the magic straight to his head, overriding his defenses before he could muster them. He would have liked to speak to her, to curse her, spit at her...instead he only stared ahead, eyes wide and uncomprehending but sickeningly aware of her twisted smile and raven-cruel eyes. "Sorry, dearie," she whispered, a low seductive moan, playful even...it was frightening, "I didn't mean for all these theatrics, but you're a hard boy to get a hold of." He would have murmured something clever, but all that came out was a strangled mess of syllables...his body resisting. "I'm not here to hurt you, Wrenmae," she assured, pausing and cocking her head to the side, almost as if listening, "Well, not to kill you anyways." She pressed her hands against his temple harder, blackness infringing on his vision. Shroud struggled, but felt his body going limp...she was too unnaturally powerful. "I'm here to show you something, a few visions of the past, nothing fancy." She grinned, each tooth perfectly aligned and flashing white. "I want you to be a good little boy and listen, see, absorb. Not many get this kind of gift...the soul forgets so many things when transitioning around, frankly I'm surprised the Eth's know anything at all, poor celestial refuse." She was babbling now, and Shroud couldn't help but notice how bright her dark eyes were, how the sun glanced off her hair so marvelously. Little things, details to distract him from impending doom. "Relax," she criticized, shaking him a little, "These things are always tricky, and I dislike using hypnotism to do it...so...so..." She shuddered, "Vulgar." Shroud hissed lethargically, a momentary act of minimal aggression. She cocked her head. "Cute," she murmured, sliding from the seat and onto the ground, letting the storyteller fall to his knees, "But you're out maneuvered, so sit back and enjoy the show." He had nothing, could feel little, only the haunting certainty he had no control. It was a terrifying notion, one that infected his bones and lanced through his blood as the world swam around him. She was sending him a vision, a longer hallucination. He had no choice but to accept it, whisked away by memories that were not his own while this woman and her motives remained eerily absent. There was only the moment. Nothing more.

[Wrenmae]

Shouts echoed down the narrow alleys, clinging to the mismatched stone as a single figure tore from shadow to shadow. He moved with an eerie sort of serpentine grace, pausing only to glance over his shoulder and roll beneath windows, his form continuous and fluid. Wrenmae saw has he did, felt the pressure of his feet against the ground, the way they did not make a sound. A shout echoed down one corridor of stone and a man in armor, wielding two blades charged towards him. Pausing, the man held out a hand toward the opponent. Wren felt his mouth grin, power surge, and rats from the gutters, from cracks in the walls, from the stones themselves rose up and swarmed over the guard, biting between plates of armor and swarming to where soft flesh lay exposed and waiting. The creatures made short work of him, but Wrenmae did not stop to watch. He moved to a door and pushed it open, swinging it shut and taking the cloak from his shoulders in one continuous motion. “Not too much trouble, I hope?” Came the cool, measured tone from behind him. Turning, Wrenmae faced a high-back chair in front of a fireplace, a column of noxious cigar smoke framing the handsome face of Vayt, who smiled cordially and waved at Wren to take a seat. He did. “I heard the commotion, surely not too much to handle…was it?” Wrenmae sat, crossing a leg over the other and leaned back, pausing briefly to secure the bandages over his arm. “No my lord, no trouble at all. Turns out our little spy had a change of heart, made things certainly more difficult.” His voice was deeper, huskier, a rasp of age as he pulled a glove off his right hand. The skin was already shifting, transforming back into a thinner, paler hand. “I wore his shape in remembrance, it should certainly make it harder for him to move.” Vayt chuckled, clapping both hands together grimly, “I put my faith in a capable Champion,” he said, taking a drag off the cigar and languidly blowing it toward the ceiling, “But why trouble yourself with assassination? It’s so…limiting. My gift could let you kill them with but a touch.” Wrenmae looked over at Vayt, smiled again. There was a friendship between them, he felt it. Vayt may be the superior in the relationship, but Wrenmae was reliable to him, useful beyond the measure of his usual pawns. “For the challenge, of course,” Wrenmae answered, shrugging, “What’s the point of spreading disease and plague if I can’t test the survivors?” Vayt was quiet, but smiled. It was enough. “I want you in Alvadas next,” the plague god said after a moment, snubbing out the cigar against the upholstery, “The place is due for a little culling.” Wrenmae put up his hands and stood, already gathering the necessary things from his temporary abode. “It shall be done,” Wrenmae assured the god, “I’ll set out in the morning.” But when he turned, Vayt was no longer there, only the faint trails of smoke told the story of his temporary stay. Wrenmae sighed, placing a dagger and a few other items on the bed before stopping near the mirror. The face that looked back at him was haggard, but handsome, a sort of bright vitality deeply burned into the features. Shocks of white hair threaded the black and the short beard and moustache across his face. His eyes were dark, inscrutable, and a bloody red thumbprint blazed from his shoulder. Wrenmae was not Wrenmae…and yet somehow completely himself. The name came to him as the memory began to grow faint, the name of who he had been years ago, in a time he could not remember. Alsane Lazaro, champion of Vayt. But if that was true, what was he doing here, now, himself yet again in a different body? What had he done to anger the plague god so? And if he had, why not be tortured for it? The world lost scope, swirled and became different, other scenes rising to take the place of this one. She moved quickly, flickers of the had-been streaming in Wrenmae’s mind’s eye…memories he could not fathom now but may remember later. He was being fed visions of his old self, shown the truth of a past life. But why? For what reason? Again he was met by not silence, but another memory, folding over the last one.

[Wrenmae]

He was standing over a grave now, just a pile of sticks, stone, and dirt molded over the hole where a body now fed the worms. It rained, softly, like a breath across his back and a wet reminder of the world around him. It was the plains of Cyphrus he stood on, waving grasslands on either side of him, swaying in the wind. There was no headstone, no eulogy, nothing to remember this fallen person but the lone Blight champion that had paused here above it. His hands were caked in dirt, bleeding from the exertion of the dig beforehand. Wind ghosted along the edge of his cloak and suggested flight, the plains still a dangerous place despite their apparent serenity. All Wrenmae could feel was the profound sadness of loss, that something had been put beneath the ground that was solely missed by the one left behind. Kneeling, Alsane patted the earth down beneath pale fingers, using the gentle shower to mask the tears pouring down his face. He was alone here, no Vayt to speak with him, no comrades…the rest of the Shroud, whatever that was, it was only the champion to mourn a loss no one else stood witness for, only him. Reaching into his cloak, Alsane withdrew a doll with black yarn hair and button eyes, a thing sowed with love and compassion, great effort and minimal skill. He laid it at the grave, standing over the small monument and letting the tears fall, letting his sorrow vent into the world around him. She had been so perfect, so beautiful, so precious to him. Why? Why had she been born so weak? He was gone again, seeing something else. Alsane strode down the streets of Alvadas, a steady advancing gait toward Ionu’s temple. Around him, people sickened, coughed, fell away. Alsane didn’t seem to care, his heart was colder now, darker. With deadly purpose he ascended the steps, walked into the temple and offered his hand in greeting to the priestesses there. Each one he greeted with death, leaving nothing but the sick and the suffering in his wake. He left the city wheezing, a temporary measure for such cockroaches, a temporary measure indeed. Vayt had not met him in the city of Illusion, so it was up to Alsane to choose the next destination. He struck out towards the Taldera region, and the plague followed with him. Choking a man to death, his blood on Wrenmae’s hands, hurling fire as he clung to the rolling deck of a capsizing ship, a beast of tentacles and teeth writing just beyond in the waves, embraced passionately with a raven haired woman, intricate tattoos along her face, holding a child for a moment before setting the babe aside and leaving the room, staring at his hands for hours. These and more whirled by Wrenmae’s mind, placed there with hypnotic influence and stored away thought after thought. He was Alsane Lazaro, a champion of Vayt. He had lived, loved, lost, and lost again in his pursuit of serving his lord. He had borne children, married a beautiful woman, and spread disease and plague as easily as exhaled breath through city and land of a thousand innocents. The information boggled it ran from his understanding of self, pieces of Alsane overlapping the pieces of Wrenmae. Confusion, fear, loathing…and only snatches of memory, enough to know that this man was something…somebody. Someone far greater than the boy had personally achieved. Wrenmae wasn’t fully aware the visions had stopped at first. On the ground, vaguely twitching, he was, at first, not aware the grit of the forest path was reality. It took a few moments to feel his own ears again, know he was no longer captive, and pull his mind back from the brink of madness. The woman sat on the cart waiting, staring off ahead of them into the forest, lost in her own little world. He had ample chance to attack, but somehow he didn’t. Instead he simply rose to his feet, shaking with the exertion of handling all the villages. “Why?” He asked, hoarsely. It felt like a long time had passed, “Why me? Why him? Why show me?” She smiled, not looking at him directly, and wrapped her arms around her chest, “It was your time to know,” She said at last, sighing, “And no memory should remain forgotten for long…a man is only dead when forgotten.”

[Wrenmae]

It took a moment, that timeless moment when one starts to regain control of their mind. Thoughts jumbled back into place, falling pieces that fell along the fault lines. His mind grew, it expanded and retracted, beat like a heart as it tried to accommodate this new self, this imagined or past self that now haunted the shadowed fringes of the young mans mind. The woman was quiet, not looking at him, but ahead of her. She was beautiful, a delicately sculpted jawline and alabaster skin. Her hair fell in raven tresses, lank ribbons that held her face in shadow and light. "How did you-" He started, the words feeling thick in his mouth, alien, unclear. He felt like he was choking on the letters. "I didn't," she said at last, cocking her head sideways at him and offering a mirthless smile, "All souls remember who they were at some point, deep down inside. It's just another hypnotism, Wrenmae, just another jaunt in your subconscious. Haven't you ever gone exploring?" He shook his head dumbly, feeling the selves within him struggle for control, vie for their own part in this strange staged drama of the mind. Wrenmae was himself, at least for now, shocked into a momentary lucid moment by the stress of the Hypnotism on his mind. He didn't know it could be forced like that, relaxing the mind before inducing hypnotic trance...pointed bursts of Djed focused by glyphs on the arm, use the point of touch as the pivotal focus point. It made sense...he just hadn't thought of combining the magics that way. "Like I said," she said to him, leaning down and tweaking his nose, "You're lucky. Your mind is in a fragile place right now, pretty much the only reason I could get in so deep, had to be now, had to be here. Believe in fate or higher powers or whatever, but I'm here, and now you know a little...at least enough to question." Wrenmae gasped, calling breath back into him, recalling life into him as fast as he could. It was dangerous out here, she was still dangerous. Who was she? "Your name?" He gasped out, looking up at her, arms slack and dragging at his side, "Who sent you?" "Who," she echoed, cooing the word in her throat, "Who indeed?" The reigns snapped and the mule began to move again, a tired forward pace into the unknown. The forest seemed to grow around them, shielding this strange meeting from outside eyes, from interruption. It continued to play, a surreal vision of motion. Wrenmae was left scattered. She glanced back as the mule toiled forward, her face already shifting back into the wrinkled crone. "Laon," she said at last, shrugging her shoulders, "Seek me out in Ravok if you want to know more." And then she was gone, and he was alone. Alone save for the world around him, existing at once in memory and in the present. These memories, they did not feel like his own, they felt alien, they pushed strange emotions into his mind. Lazaro was a great man, her voice ghosted from his mind, the after-echo of her hypnotic presence, You'll soon see why. But there was no explanation farther...only the silence of the forest, the hoots and calls of life continuing. Leaving Wrenmae behind. Alone...save for the pieces that bickered and swirled within him.

[Phoenix]

Wrenmae

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	3
Hypnotism	3
Persuasion	2
Tracking	1

Lores

• Shroud- one half of the whole
• Fearing that which one does not understand
• Hypnotism used against a Hypnotist
• Reliving the past
• Remembering ones old self
• To lose ones family not once, but twice
• Exploring ones Subconscious
• The mystery of Laon

The Order of the Phoenix

Great thread. I always look forward to reading your threads with immense excitement.

I tried to give XP where I could. Even though Wrenmae was the one hypnotized, I gave him XP for recognizing it and how he handled the situation; not everyone is perfect and I liked that he knew when he couldn't fight back, so I rewarded it.

If there seems to be anything I missed, Send me a message and we can fix the problem.