Flashback What The Night Fears Most

[Gideon]

21st of Spring, 503 AV Na'il re Kahin did not lead a very charmed life...but neither was he a repugnant waste of Eypharian flesh. One might say he was just a shrewd man of business with mortal vices, pulled by puppet strings that belonged to one of the Houses of the notorious families of Ahnatep. Which House didn't quite matter tonight, though; not for Na'il anyway. What mattered to him was that he was pleasantly drunk on some of the city's finest spirits, and had a young male concubine in tow whom he hoped might warm his bed. Not that the boy ever had a choice in the matter to begin with. But the stars hung peacefully in the velvety sky with Leth dancing among them, the pair stumbling towards the Eypharian's grand homestead to the sounds of heavy breathing shared between them. Na'il's husky frame was shouldered on the boy's right side while he attempted to carve the straightest path possible down the abandoned avenue for both of them. It was still early in the evening for most of the city's socialites to return home, and late enough that those who made a living breaking their backs in the sweat and toil of an honest day's work were already resting. This meant that between Na'il and the boy, they were the only two to be found for several blocks, the sounds of faraway debauchery loud enough to fill the empty air with fistfuls of muffled laughter and conversation. "Do y--do y'know where I live?" The drunken Eypharian slurred in Arumenic, bobbling black eyes weighted with heavy lids wavering over the black scalp standing next to him. "Yes of course, Master Kahin. Do you not recognize me?" It was a trained sort of sadness that guilted his tongue, and came with the territory of being a servant of the Houses. Na'il's head rolled back until his neck stopped the burden from falling off, eyes popping white for a moment before they focused poignantly on the boy next to him. "Nuh-nope. Can't say that I do. I...just got back...from Zeltiva you know." Laughter this time, as sweet and innocent as the sun sparkling through a drop of morning dew. "And did you have this much fun in Zeltiva, sir?" piped the small voice. "No!" The shout disturbed the silence as though it were sentient, echoing down alleys and stirring a few eyes from their rest. "All petching business!" One of two right arms slung rancorously from his side into the open air, agitating the fat of his exposed stomach. "And c-colder than a Dhani's glare. We have NO BUS'N--!" His words stuttered to a halt by an unexpected loss of balance, feet fumbling across the packed sand of the empty street as he pulled desperately on the boy for guidance. Cringing against the weight and pulling with all his lesser might, the servant managed to steady Na'il before they both took a fall. It allowed the younger man a much needed sigh of relief, both for ending Kahin's tirade as well as saving his own skin from the bite of the lash. A moment's pause to reconvene and they trudged on again in silence this time, further away from the night's more festive sounds. To look at it from the outside did not do Na'il's home much justice, pale stone boundary fences surrounding even paler edifices that led up to a flat and pale roof. The wooden shutters had been latched closed while he'd been away on business, and from inside the house was very dark. He'd needed the boy to fetch his keys from his belt loop for him, and once they'd made it inside the servant was then tasked again to set Na'il against a wall while he fetched some light from further within. There was something different about the interior of the merchant's home, however. Even in the dim lighting coming from the open door where Leth shed a somber glow on the first few feet of his tiled floor, Na'il had a strange feeling of something being...off. His stupor may have dulled his senses, but he could have sworn the scent of tobacco clung to the air like a foul miasma, and there was the hint of a draft moving towards him to the outside rather than coming in. It was enough to raise suspicion, but as of yet had mingled with fear. "Boy?" He called out hesitantly into the infinite. The sobering silence was the only reply. "Boy? Are you there?" His fingers fumbled blindly along the smooth wall as the Eypharian made his way further into the domicile, eyes not yet adjusted to the stifling and unquenchable darkness of a shuttered home. Na'il's feet still provided a sluggish gait from a full night's worth of drinking, gliding along the sleek tile by the whisper of his leather sandals. The rest was as quiet as death, his sense of sudden isolation stirring up a nervous chuckle that rattled shallow jowls. "Puh'laying games already, are we? You... You musht know me, after all. I like games...Eh-heh." His guiding foot nudged against something solid and unmoving in the opaque depths, a piece of furniture by his reckoning as Na'il turned to gauge the distance from himself to the door. In turning his head however, a whisper-soft gust of cold air swept past the Eypharian's ear that was pointed towards the pitched space. A startled gasp filled his lungs and he swept back around to find...nothing. Nothing but black. "All right! That's enough! Turn a light on boy!" His anger seemed to pressure some courage into his voice, though his foot took a tentative step back. In doing so, the Eypharian noticed that the foot he'd removed did not go so willingly. It was almost as if something had momentarily glued it to the floor. Things were steadily becoming frightfully real. Still encouraged to support his bulk against the wall, Na'il turned for the door in a panic, his four arms rolling across the stone surface as he stumbled his way towards freedom, one foot still sticking more generously to the floor than the other. But then, like out of a child's darkest nightmares whose imaginations run most wild, a living shadow pulled away from the rest, two arms, not four or six, dangling at his side like tenebrous horrors. His silhouette was as good as Dira herself, though there was a menace to it that made the drunken sponge wretch in agony and crash to the floor. "N-n-n-no. No-no-no-no. No!" The black hand reached behind it's impenetrable body, grabbed hold of the latch to the outside door, and gently swung it closed. Along with it, the last threads of light. For a brief moment, the first syllable of a scream clawed out from mud-brick walls and into dreamer's dreams, but then...silence.

[Gideon]

Na'il was having the most horrific nightmare he could ever remember. A man dressed in pristine robes of sable-- No. There wasn't a shred of clothing draped across him at all. He was shadow incarnate, raised from whatever bottomless pit that fear earned its inauspicious name. It was stalking him down the abandoned city streets of Ahnatep, rising from each corner he passed where the light scarcely touched. The ship. He had to get back to the ship. It was his only way to escape this monstrosity, whatever it was. He had no petching idea what the shadow even wanted, but no good could come of it. So he ran, until his lungs burned to smoldering ash and his feet became raw with blood smear. But the boat was near. He could smell the salty brine. So close... Water. Its cool kiss splashed against his sun-baked, grease-slicked flesh, momentarily making him forget that he was ever being chased. But water wasn't supposed to be around you. It was supposed to be beneath you, under the keel of your rocking boat in a high north wind towards Zeltiva. Na'il didn't know how to swim. Panic rose. His breaths became labored. Drowning. He choked on the acrid taste like it was poison he was swallowing. It may as well have been. Poison took less time to arrest the beat of one's heart, he sarcastically mused. Water filled your lungs until your breaths drew short and became more painful. This was torture. This was... Not real. Na'il opened his eyes to the light of a single candle glowing softly from atop the small bureau in his bedchamber, ominous shadows tossed against decorated walls he'd worked hard to fill with the meaningless treasures from a life of travel. His first instinct was to scream bloody murder, but the Eypharian quickly realized that there was something cleverly in place to keep him from doing so. A curious tongue rolled gently against a wad of fabric stuffed into his bloated cheeks, suffused with the bitter taste of his own sweat. Looking down he quickly noticed that a strip of fabric from his flax vest had been torn from the hem. Movement, as he'd already suspected, was quite limited, arms and legs bound by a length of rope that saw his body tied to a chair. The hemp chaffed to put it mildly, and there were a few key areas where his raw flesh agitated the nerve endings attached to it. He must have been thrashing in his sleep, a habit he'd never quite gotten rid of since the early days of his childhood. That or whoever did this showed little concern for the Eypharian's well-being when he'd bound him to this chair. A rustling of movement from behind Na'il encouraged a frightful gasp to bubble up from his stomach, head spinning as far as his neck would take him to the doorway leading into the hall. There against the threshold was a man, a human...Benshiran? No. Just a regular man, with his arm raised against the frame and body leaning towards it like he owned the place. His hair was a tangle of youthful blonde and his features were sharp like an osprey. Shadows skittered grimly across his face, and his choice in clothing put him from around these parts. But Na'il had never seen this man in his entire life. Who was he? Where did he come from? "I hope you speak the Common tongue, Eypharian." The shadow said it all so casually, a touch of disappointment poised on his lips as though half suspecting Na'il might shake his head at that very moment. "My Arumenic is quite limited, and a conversational gap could mean all the difference between whether you live or die." To look in Gideon's eyes at that moment was to look at the face of Dira, glowing with solemnity and a scintilla of the inevitable. Na'il turned his gaze away quickly, tears brimming from kohl darkened eyelashes as he choked on a wet sob, knowing in that moment what his own mortality meant to him. "Do you?" whispered the dark voice again, softer this time for the respect of his captive's privacy. Kahin nodded as a tear welled into his eye and cascaded down his cheek. The specter of human flesh moved towards the bureau where the candle sat, allowing it's light to still splash on Na'il's damp cheeks while covering his assailant by silhouette. Gideon's calm and easy manner made him appear no stranger to the aberrant process, palms flattening along each side of the desk where the edge tapered off towards the ground. His gaze was steadier than than a rock against a river's current. "I'm going to ask you several questions, Na'il re Kahin... Of course I know your name. I'm not some petty larcenist who gets his jollies off watching you sweat. I work for an entity, and that entity has some business they'd like to settle with you. So, answer these questions honestly and we'll see where the night takes us." The Eypharian nodded slowly this time, dipping his head in abject misery. "First question. Is there anyone else that lives with you, aside from the boy?" Gideon's eyebrows rose slightly to the deep baritone of his voice, lower jaw grinding fastidiously from side to side. All Na'il could think about was what fate had befallen his concubine, glistening eyes seeming to suggest that he was curious to the boy's whereabouts. He shook his head quickly, pleading silently with his captor to divulge some bit of information. Gideon darkly obliged. "He's dead." It was spoken with such nonchalance, like a passing anecdote hardly worth the mention. "A casualty the Houses will not likely miss." The Eypharian slumped dejectedly in his chair, as little his bondage would allow. His head still swam with the memory of the child's smooth skin brushing affectionately against his own, innocent laughter plaguing his ears like the sweetest song he'd ever heard. It was all such a petching waste, but concubines were not the sort to be lamented. His tears still shed for his own circumstance, as Na'il slowly adjusted and sat up again in his seat, staring willfully at the wall before him where a painting sat whose detail could not be drawn from the meager light. "Your business often takes you to Zeltiva, yes? You traded marble for the East Winds in exchange for goods and money?" Na'il felt he was being led to some precipice he could not turn back from, pushed by the hand of a man whom had bound him with rope. He could do little else but nod, the thought of a lie too much trouble for his mind to treat with dignity. "And did you ever keep some for yourself? Skim a little off the top as a personal stipend you could line your pockets with?" Realization sprung to life on the Eypharian's olive skinned face as he shook his bulging cheeks vehemently, a sputtering whimper choking the back of his throat. He'd made some bad choices in his life, but stealing from a House was as good as the darkest sin one could imagine. "Don't lie to me, Kahin. I will take that piece of cloth you have in your fat mouth and shove it so far down your throat that you will be shitting Pycon sized tapestries for the rest of your petching life." Never once did Gideon's voice deviate from the chilling tone of a whisper, which gave his words a certain edge that sunk deep beneath the skin until it found bone. Kahin, thinking desperately for a moment with wide brimmed eyes, shook his head imploringly once more. A fervent staccato of footsteps rushed like an errant breeze across the tiled floor, closing the gap between the two men in the halting matter of a second. Na'il could do naught but cringe for what happened next, his paunch collapsing in on itself as fat rippled away from the point where Gideon's fist collided, sinking deeply through a mound of flesh towards vital organs and wounded pride. The Eypharian buckled against the restraints, chin dipping towards the floor as a painful sob racked his entire body and the chair balked against his weight. More troublesome however, was the small well of alcohol he'd accrued over the night's events churning up his throat with acidic bile. A deluge of bitter viscous sprayed from drawn lips, soaking the cloth which stuffed his mouth like a stuck pig. The monstrous taste only inspired him to vomit more, leaning forward as much as his bindings would allow as it splashed into his lap and down to the floor. Gideon simply watched from a looming height above, scion of apathy, his sandals splashed with the occasional downpour that fell to the floor. "Your pay doesn't befit the lifestyle, Na'il re Kahin. The money is coming from somewhere. The baubles you have lining your walls, the drinks you pour down your greedy throat, the gambling expenses you never come away on top of. I've been watching you, Kahin, and so have my employers. And they want to know why it is you keep deferring your debts if you have so much miza to waste on frivolity." Na'il cried into the soaking cloth, more dark effluence dribbling down his chin and splashing into his damp lap. He'd never been treated in such ways, even when displeasure had been wrought by his actions. This was an entirely new level of cruelty, and the Eypharian did not know how to cope with it other than sobbing his little black guts out, trying his best to ignore the wretched taste that filled his mouth or the misery that covered his lap. This was what a slave's life should entail, not his own. "Mmffmmf! Uhmmfff!" He knew it would do him little good, but he moaned against the cloth anyway. There was just no getting around how much fear he felt consumed by, or how much more of this he could even take. Tears and sweat wilted across his insolent facade, pleading silently with his captor for absolution.

[Gideon]

The slow draw of Gideon Mason's eyes did not impart even the smallest ounce of remorse for his captive, looking through him as though the chair were an empty piece of furniture placed oddly in the center of the vacant room. That was the nature of the business, though. If you couldn't close yourself off to the world, you invited error to sup with you as an honored guest at your immaculately set table. And like the drunk uncle who shows up for the holidays unannounced, error would likewise pull the tablecloth down one way or another, along with everything else you so carefully planned. But Gideon had grown tired of making such mistakes in the past, and so he had changed the one thing he had a responsibility towards: himself. It was never an easy task to do away with one's conscience. Not only did it take practice and considerable effort, but you had to convince yourself that it was the right choice. Until it became repetition. Until there was not even the slightest shadow of doubt that guilt might creep in and wreak havoc on your designs. Trying to persuade the soul, the epicenter of one's existence, that it would benefit more from not having a set of demarcations to compass the limits of its own morality? It was damn near impossible. Unless you allowed it to damage you, to turn you into something of a monster from the deepest depths of nightmare. The kind of beast that even grown, hardened men would soil themselves to hear and pale to see. That was the price one paid. Even so, Gideon was not driven by the abomination he had painstakingly crafted. There was a time and a place for it, when life demanded that mercy would only get him killed, or worse. It was not so easy as pulling a lever. Not in the slightest. But he had a will of his own, and there were areas of compassion in his heart waiting to be filled by purpose. Work was little more than a means to an end. For now though, that end happened to be nothing more than greed. Brushing the back of his long fingers against the exposed flesh of his captive's shoulder, Gideon wound them up along the Eypharian's short, graceless neck until they coiled beneath his sagging chin and squeezed. Plump, wet flaps of flesh became his to control, turning Na'il's head forcefully until both men stared one another in the eye. There was a look of momentary admonishment brandished across the shadow's countenance when his captive sought to look the other way, vomit still dripping from his lips and pattering softly like single drops of rain into a puddle. Gideon simply tightened his powerful grip until the pain became impossible to resist, gifted with a reward for his efforts as Kahin sniveled and shot a defiant stare back up. "Now," he began again, a guttural hiss extending from the deepest cords of his throat where only malice existed. "Where is all the gold coming from then, Na'il? And if you so much as speak above a whisper when I remove that rotten mess you have balled up in your throat, I am going to take your fat neck and squeeze it until your eyes become two hanging ornaments so that the rats feasting on your rotting corpse will have some holiday cheer to accompany them. Do I make myself clear?" Na'il would have agreed to most anything to have the cloth removed, its taste beginning to sour even more now that it was drying inside his mouth. He nodded feverishly, and the other quietly obliged him, removing his hand from under the olive skin and discarding the material off to the side where it slapped wetly with the tiling. The fact that he had another man's bile smeared across his fingers hardly seemed to concern Gideon, though the stench was alarming enough to make his nose crinkle in disgust. The Eypharian retched violently almost immediately, tongue working restlessly to remove the filth so that he might be rid of its unsavory taste. His captor was an impatient man however, and when words did not fall from the lips of the ensnared, the back of a hand smashed stiffly into Na'il's cheek, head snapping indignantly to the side. "In-In-Inheritance!" he frothed. "I had a rich uncle with no next of--" Another slap against the same cheek, harder this time. "I said keep your voice down. Final warning." Gideon would have never admitted to it, but after punching a man in the gut and using the back of his hand as an impromptu switch twice in a row, his knuckles were painfully sore, the flesh surrounding them stark white next to the scarlet red. "I'm--! Sorry.. sorry... but it's the truth." "And where's the rest of this inheritance?" "Gone..." Na'il had never looked so frightened and despondent at the same time. He was only beginning to understand what would earn him punishment in this exchange. Calmly, dangerously, Gideon prowled towards the bureau, eying the flickering tallow for one long breath as tenebrous lines rippled across his stony countenance. Reaching out, he grasped the sallow block into his callused hand, the small basin of melted fat at the top draining down its sides and onto sandy fingers. It burned, but the pain one man experienced would be only a fraction of what he had in mind for Na'il. His employers demanded compensation, and it was up to their hired muscle to dirty his hands to see the job through. Blood debts were always a last resort, easing the mind but never filling the pocket. And the foreigner had his reputation to think of. Would he be known as a man to get the job done? Or a butcher who settled debts the old fashioned way? Pivoting slowly on his left foot, Gideon's footsteps pounded like hammer strokes to the ears of his captive, the Eypharian's dark eyes glowing with fixation on the light. He began to fumble with his words almost immediately, the pervasive silence in the room choking him with dread. "I can-I can get you your money!" he rasped, careful not to breach the terms of his freedom to speak. "You'd best," the treacherous voice began, body coming to stand before Na'il this time as his foot lifted from the ground, placing itself between the Eypharian's legs with the toe hovering vexingly over the man's crotch. "Wh-what are...?" "Because if I come back in three days to find out you've not made a spitting copper?" His eyes grappled narrowly with Na'il's own, the threat of imminent pain like cold fire in his eyes. "You'll be dead before your head touches the ground." Shoving his raised leg forward, the chair groaned for a split-second before tipping backward. Its occupant yelped tensely in surprise, falling, but stopped jarringly short by the foot board of the bed sitting purposefully behind him. The odd angle and two remaining legs had the wood moaning testily against the cumbersome weight, but Gideon would not be waiting to see the man crumble. Instead, he walked coolly to Na'il's side and bent over so that both men had no other option but to stare at one another. One man's face showed abject fear, the other, silent asperity. That was until Gideon drew the flame before both of them, free hand grabbing thick tufts of the Eypharian's black locks and pulling firmly so that quivering flesh stretched. Then, unthinkably, Gideon tipped the tallow's flame until the searing fat poured generously over his captive's right eye, drop by agonizing drop. A horrendous scream preceded the eternal darkness.

[Colombina]

The XP Wand Is Waved! There is little that makes a mod more nervous than the introduction of a new assassin or mercenary character. You never know quite what they are going to do. I know you're a talented writer, so I was curious to see what you would do with this fellow. Have to say I am especially pleased. This was a solid thread, and let me explain why I thought so! It was simple, nothing overly complicated but the motivation for all parties was believable. Also, the intro had good pacing and details that gave it texture. The young male concubine was a sad, fitting touch. The violence/action was also subtle and didn't raise any skill level alarm bells. Normally, I get twitchy over including noble house politics without giving me a heads up, but this was perfectly done and suitably vague. The East Winds tend to be ruthless when it comes to money. Gideon's Loot 1 XP Stealth 1 XP Observation 3 XP Interrogation 3 XP Intimidation Lore of East Wind's Business Interests Lore of Effective Gagging Methods Let me know if I missed anything! Colombina is pleased.