Care for a Foot? (Seidaku)

[Ulric]

80th of Summer, 511 AV Ulric had only been in the city for a few days, but he’d already decided that Ionu was an enormous pain in the arse. Oh, it had sounded a good idea at first. Hide in this chimeric surround. Try to evoke his latent powers. The thing was, neither of those desires meant anything when he couldn’t even find his lodgings. He tried to embrace this seething hive of illusion, with its ever-shifting streets and often horrifying surprises, but more often than not, he ended up cursing them. “Son of a petching whore,” he growled, rubbing the side of his face as stepped away from the crumbling plaster of a structure that hadn’t been standing in front a moment ago. “Ionu, do you ever tire of these childish antics?” Ulric already knew the answer to that. Moving away from the building, he stood before an empty stretch of street and reached out a hand. More plaster. He worked his way around this fresh obstacle, wondering where he was going. He knew he’d eventually arrive at his destination, but how long would that take? There were no landmarks, anyway. No way of knowing how to find the place. And what in seven types of flaming goat shyke is that? he gaped at a lewd piece of marble statuary, floating just over his head. At least it was better than walking into walls. Ulric remained there for a few moments, wondering if such acts were even possible, then returned to his wild goose chase. For a time, he walked through the streets, regarding passersby with hooded eyes. He wasn’t certain if their visages were also false. This, of course, only frayed his nerves. Every so often, he shot a quick glance at his gasvikA blue, humanoid creature that you won’t be able to see/hear. They were clearly out of their depths. Ulric wore a fresh tunic and pair of trousers, so he was slightly less sinister than usual, although the axe hanging from his belt earned him a few wary looks. He wanted to blend in with the crowd, but he wasn’t going to sacrifice the axe. No, it was better to cultivate the presence of a wandering hunter, or some guise unlikely to garner suspicion. Heading down a flaming alley, he emerged on a street – halting as he glimpsed something unusual on the cobbles. He nudged it with his toe, cursing when he realized that it was not, as he’d suspected, the fruit of illusion. There was a severed foot just lying there. No puddle of blood was visible, while off to one side, a dark entry beckoned. “What the petch is this?” Ulric picked up the foot, turned it over. On closer inspection, he could have sworn that it belonged to a woman. He looked up, saw a man look in his direction. “You there, does this happen very often?"

[Seidaku]

On his way to the Bizarre for a fresh supply of ink and papers, Seidaku wandered easily through Alvadas' streets. There was a comforting sort of sameness in the way nothing was ever the same way twice. His brow furrowed at the thought, that was not quite right, but it was as close as he could ever come to describing how he felt about the city.

He turned a corner, stepping out of a night shrouded boulevard and into the noon sun. Blinking his now watering eyes to try and adjust them to the new brightness, he saw a... unique piece of sculpture. "Well, that is certainly a first," he said, fairly certain that the act depicted was not physically possible, or at least not terribly comfortable if it was. For a moment, he saw Vhanet twisted like that, bent...

With an embarassed cough and banished the thought from his mind, blushing furiously as he turned away from the lewd statue.

“You there, does this happen very often?"

Pulling to an abrupt stop, Seidaku looked up and immediately spotted the source of the question, the rather menacing fellow glaring at him. There was no one thing that labeled him a foreigner, but that was the impression that Seidaku gathered from him.

"I'm sorry," he said, "Does what happen very-," a closer look revealed the wicked looking axe hanging from his belt, and what he was holding in his hand. Seidaku blanched, "Oh... that's a... is that a foot?"

[Ulric]

Ulric was confused as to why the foot was lying there, and even a bit disconcerted, but he found himself grinning at the absurdity of the situation. This was more than faintly ridiculous. What sort of person left a foot in the street? Probably the disturbed sort, but then again, he’d seen worse. He regarded the stranger, not trying very hard to conceal the dark amusement he took in the find. “Well, there are toes complete with grimy nails, so must be a foot. Or this could just be a morpher’s experiment, gone terribly wrong. Here, catch.” With a bark of laughter, he threw the foot to the man, rather than at him. Ulric hadn’t been raised with much in the way of manners, but he figured it wasn’t courteous to hurl severed appendages at strangers. “What do you think it’s doing here?” he asked. “And more importantly, where did it come from?” He regarded the open door, he didn’t know if it was real, or just another trick. In fact, he was half-convinced that he was the object of another elaborate joke. Where’s the blood? he wondered. The stump isn’t completely dry, which means it bled out a while ago, but the flesh hasn’t begun to mortify. With a shudder, he stared at the foot again, wondering if it was maledicted by some twisted soul. There was no way of saying… yet. And he didn’t care to find out. He’d breathe easier if the grisly object wasn’t in his hands.

[Seidaku]

Blinking rapidly in confusion, Seidaku asked, "Why do you have a fo-?" his question was cut off in a strangled shout as the foot came sailing at him. Instinct caused him to grab it and, when he consciously realized what he was now holding, he flinched visibly and hurled the offending appendage to the ground.

His face tinged green, he looked back up at the obvious maniac who had thrown a foot at him, all the while brushing his hands on his pants in disgust, "It, umm, well, it might come... that is, maybe in there?" He pointed at the darkened doorway, "A foot is just not something that you, umm... misplace."

He swallowed audibly, quietly pleased with himself that he was handling this whole, awful situation so well.

[Ulric]

The sight of the man’s face when he plucked the foot from the air, then realized what it was, was almost too much to bear. Ulric barely managed to hold in his laughter, though he caught a glimpse of his gasvik out of the corner of his eye. Desank was lying on the cobbles, laughing wildly. Don’t be rude, he wanted to say, but then some explaining would be in order, and he hated explaining things, much less a dangerous secret like this. “You don’t look so great,” Ulric said, observing the stranger’s pallor. “Try not to throw up on my boots, okay?” That would have been unfortunate, not to mention disgusting, but looking on the bright side, at least he’d have a reason to replace the petching things. Still, he really hoped the man didn’t throw up. “Are you sure this isn’t a prank?” Ulric took one step toward the door, and then a second, his brow furrowing. He stuck his hand inside, only to find that that it was, in fact, real. The place looked empty. “Here, take a look in here,” he said. His already rampant paranoia was worsening, so that he wanted a body to shove in there, just in case there were any traps.

[Seidaku]

"Oh, umm, I'm fine," he said, swallowing audibly and pointedly not looking at the foot. Though, to err on the side of caution, he faced slightly away from the man. His stomach was feeling... unsettled.

Seidaku blinked in surprise at the next question, "What sort of awful person would pull a- a prank like this? I mean, it's... well, it's," he pointed down at the severed appendage on the cobbles, "That is a person's foot."

By this point, the other man had begun to move toward the door of one of Alvadas' many buildings. There was no sign posted to indicate its function, which was far from unusual. However, the darkness of the interior likely precluded its use as a shop or other place of business.

Stepping quickly in a wide circle around the foot still lying on the cobblestones - strange that they were only cobblestones and not something more... exotic - to join the man in inspecting the interior of the building.

"It looks empty," he finally said, "But, umm... It might not be. Alvadas is funny that way sometimes. Well, all the time, really..."

[Ulric]

Empty, but might not be. That was a succinct way of stating everything that was wrong with this city. Ulric had grown up in Ravok, praying to the god of betrayal and deception, but Alvadas was different. Ionu didn’t seem to care. The only purpose of its inscrutable domain, as far as he could make out, was providing a sort of levity to drown out the sorrows of the world. Ulric was certain he’d enjoy screwing with people if he were a god. There had to be some perks. However, he couldn’t shake his doubts that the foot was another sort of trickery. He cast a sideways glance at the man. “This city would drive a cartographer mad,” he snorted. He didn’t like the feeling of this, but for some reason, he felt as though he had nothing to fear. He made a slight, almost imperceptible gesture, a signal for his gasvik to go ahead. Desank slunk through the door. He looked left, then right. Ulric gave a shrug, watching the gasvik move further into the shadows. “Ah, shyke – why not?” He passed into the room. “Do you think we’ll find Mr. Foot?” he asked the stranger, although he wasn’t even certain the man was there. He searched the chamber, somewhat perturbed by its subtle changes. Oh, it was empty all right, but not as empty as it seemed. Every time he looked around, he saw something new. Now, a tad more light filtered through the greasy, cracked window. There was a broken chair in the corner and a poker by the fire, neither of which had been there before. The grate was overflowing with ashes. To the side, a flight of rickety stairs led to a second floor. There was a cheap tapestry on the wall, frayed and dusty. He saw that it depicted some kind of scene, but couldn’t make it out through the layers of grime. So he blew, hard. A cloud of dust rose, choking him. He sneezed violently.

[Seidaku]

"Actually," Seidaku said, peering owlishly into the seemingly empty room, "I have a theory about that. Since Ionu is capable of creating illusions so realistic that they can fool even our senses, it is possible that Alvadas does not even exist."

He gave a quick chuckle and continued, the horrifying events of the past few minutes forgotten in his explanation, "Of course, there is a location that we call Alvadas, and obviously people live there. However, the number of real physical locations is potentially very small. If an illusion could be so complete, so real, that it could fool our own perceptions, then it would not matter if the buildings themselves were real. We would never feel the rain, or the cold, or the heat. With the climate as temperate as it is, we are in no real danger of death from that heat or cold. As long as the basic requirements of food and water were met, we would never know whether or not we were actually experiencing something, or if we only thought we did."

"Of course, at that point it doesn't matter whether or not... Oh," he realized that he was talking to the man's back as he entered the darkened room. For a moment, he considered leaving well enough alone and going on his way, but the thought of not knowing filled him with almost physical ache. Even if knowledge was terrifying, he wanted to know.

And so, he followed the scruffily bearded, sinister looking man into the darkened building, without ever thinking that perhaps the man and his axe might be the source of the severed foot. He was just in time to walk into a thick cloud of choking dust. Coughing miserably and with his eyes watering, he gasped for breath and managed to point at the tapestry and wheeze, "I think it is a local work. Look at the bold, almost violent use of color. The image itself is lost in the chaos of background and foreground, and if you... Sorry, I'm rambling. Maybe something is upstairs?"

[Ulric]

“You’re sort of disturbing, you know that, right?” Ulric brushed the dust from his whiskers, giving the man a curious glance. He had to admit, as far-fetched as the theory sounded, he couldn’t shake it away. How else could you explain a city that kept shifting? He hadn’t thought about this sort of thing before, but parts of it made a kind of sense. Nearly everything could be false. The floor beneath their feet, the stairs, the entire house even, or the rows of houses. They could just be standing next to a few boulders, senses blinded to a couple of cows grazing nearby. He didn’t even want to think of that. Not everything could be false. Once again, his paranoia came rushing back. “I’ve had my own problems with sanity, so I don’t know if that’s what’s talking, but you might be the sanest person in this entire city,” he said. From the way the stranger dissected the tapestry, he knew the man was more perceptive than most, perhaps a scholar of some sort. Having ideas could be dangerous. However, he figured that he was relatively safe with the gasvik at his side. Ulric gave the stairs a dubious glance. They didn’t inspire much confidence in him, but the warped steps didn’t seem to show any signs of decay or termites, just years of dust. Except for the fifth, where somebody had etched a crude, grinning face with a knife. He also made out a smudge of blue paint on the plaster, almost obscured by the shadows and a slowly creeping swath of water damage. How curious. “I might as well go first,” he said, lowering a hand to his knife. “If you’re going to faint, don’t expect me to catch you…” He’d neglected his courtesies. Not that he’d ever had them, of course, but he liked to pretend that he did. “They call me Ulric. If I happen to fall into the basement, do be a good fellow and haul me out.” Tentatively, he put his boot on the first step, incrementally placing his weight on it until he felt confident in raising the other foot. The step creaked, but held. He breathed a sigh of relief. This would be a shameful way to die. He began to ascend the stairs – creak, creak, no creak, creak – while making sure to avoid the step that held the carving. As he passed, he became aware that the paint was gone. “Hmmm,” he scowled. That was the only thing he could say.

[Seidaku]

"Oh, umm... I'm sorry?," he frowned slightly. Disturbing? The man had thrown a foot at him, and he was disturbing? And he was now in a dark building with someone who may or may not be a mad man. His eyes were drawn again to the wicked looking axe hanging from the man's belt and he swallowed audibly. He did not see any blood on the axe though, but perhaps the man was a fastidious axe murderer. He stifled a shrill giggle at the thought. He could feel panic bubbling just below the surface again as he was confronted with the reality of his situation.

He gave a soft harrumph at the man's condescending tone. He was in no danger of fainting... probably. He had been a bit light headed for a moment when he first saw the foot, but that was a perfectly normal response to such an event. Really, he had handled the unexpected events of the day with remarkable aplomb. And here he was now, investigating a potential murder. He felt positively heroic. He wondered if he should tell Vhanet about this. It was more than a little macabre though, and he did not want to worry her.

The fact that Ulric wanted to share his name was a good sign. Why would you introduce yourself to someone before you killed them with an axe? He was quite a rude man, but given the circumstances, it was understandable.

"My name is Seidaku, and you can, umm, you can count on me" he said, following Ulric up the stairs with an ungodly creaking racket. He stopped, his head just above the fifth stair, staring at the crude carving of the leering face. Was it significant? Maybe a warning, or a territorial marking? It looked much newer than the general condition of the building.

He reached out with one hand, running his fingers over the carving. It felt like just that, a crudely done carving, "Do you think that the person who cut off that foot carved this?"