Dark Moon (Liminal)

[Jackson LaCroix]

First of Spring of 510 A.V.

The day felt hot. Crimson shades of cinders fueled this new dusk light, yet it was purple and corrosive like a fragmented splinter that comes to the surface but slowly. Spring was good that way, for it got the old blood from the system, let you walk... Let You Breathe. A Hunger that made a man feel real. Detached like an arrow to be sung screaming. Notched for too long and you'd likely be eaten up by the sun. Funny, his tongue was taunt and burning.. for all he could want was to taste iron.
Shifting veins.

Earth moved like people. Migrating over from bones to beating. Moss and river or rather here you had the sweet penance of burning slag and a moist sweat. Laughter. Regardless of how hard you were, how many people you emptied it was laughter that crossed your barriers, shattered your precious shields. Something -human. Something shared.

The oil strokes of moving paint dried into the finish of shadows for now came night's blessing, the soft bed of Akaija. Jackson LaCroix pulled back the covers to reveal a white circle. The moon.

His hands felt heavy yet he moved as a flicker of lost light.

Here among the stained Sunberth were secrets that should become plucked like harp strings of rigid and straightened hair. That made even him smile, moon's luminary glow still fresh in his eyes, making the human look feral and quiet. ha.

Silent whisper of words. Long silent now coaxed upon the crux of his cross.

[Liminal]

The bleached wood and brick of the buildings outside reflected in the moonlight like a pile of bones. It wasn't an unfitting metaphor for what lay inside the city.

Sunberth was well known as a place that a person could find anything they would want, no matter how immoral, unpredictable, or depraved. Of course, such things often came with a heavy price, and precious few people managed to get what they wanted and return unscathed. Not that this stopped people from trying.

Some wanted easy money, easier sex, or, easiest of all, a chance to engage in violence with few consequences. All these things were possible, of course. But there was more.

Dealers in stolen goods found Sunberth the easiest of all places to unload their merchandise. Who was going to stop them? Sunberth had no government, no laws, not even a crime boss who controlled the entire city. Anything, from slaves to artwork, moved through the shifting markets.

And artifacts. They came through too.

Pre-Valterrian objects of any kind usually came with a price, given their scarcity. Some could be found in Syliras, or Zeltiva, or similar places. But no one in any of those cities would allow the sale of, say, enchanted weaponry, or unexamined amulets, or books of the forbidden arts.

Rumors swirled that such things existed, and that they could be had in Sunberth. Treasure hunters from Lisnar, the only remaining settlement near the lost Alahean capital of Treval, had uncovered objects of extreme power and danger, and had come to Sunberth to convert them into cash. What treasures were they? What power, and what danger? That depended on who was telling the story...

[Jackson LaCroix]

Young buds lifted from a rotted oak. The knotted fragrance of lavender wept between the rusty cage wires. Cross pushed through a prostitute like a dry knife. He gleaned over the yard watching a dog look up at him from across the distant fire. The animal turned it's head down while the man pressed ahead. There was a finality to his presence. A forge that hardened inside the explosion of burning phosphorus. A purification of metal.

His boots crushed insect husks into sunken tar. Lines of humans shimmered then fell as rebellious celestials amongst the darkness. It made him shiver, the sudden cold. He smirked slow for someone watched his walk, and it was no one on four legs. This animal stood higher, tasting the breathe of wind that nearly tore the flames out from the navel of the city. Cadmium hunger contrasted the pearl shell of shadow.
Yshul smiled from every seam.
Makeshift effigies and totems nailed to the rain soaked spires of their goddess's nest.

Jax's eyes shifted over the landscape, causing a ripple to fall against the backs of two figures guarding the silhouette who stared back. He felt strings against his legs and chest but they snapped as if changing the fate presented. Released from the pendulum of gravity his ghost stood, no wavered close. Summoned as a geist to call for answers the man pursued his chance. Fickle. He rolled laughing dice with the force of his ego. If Dira should dance to the maddening fiddle this man would remove both shoes and walk through the parting to ignore the sound. A priest of the Thief Queen whistled, money glistened. Sharp steel blades cut out under tarp clothe. He moved against, leaping over the spray of bodies to the edge of sensation. Numbing his heart beat. Deafening.

[Liminal]

The alleyways almost seemed to be attempting to crush those who walked them. The maze of buildings blocked out the breeze, leaving the air heavy and pungent.

A man was leaning against the side of one of the slatboard walls. In his hands, he held a long knife with a curved blade. A rib-catcher, they called them here. Easy to stick into someone, but extremely painful and difficult to remove. It was less a fighter's weapon and more an assassin's, or someone who wanted to send a very clear, very specific message.

He looked up, noticing Jackson's approach. His body tensed with the quickness of someone familiar with gut reactions meaning the difference between life and death. As he moved, the dull light shifted across his face. He might have been thirty, though the scars on his cheek made him look older, and his chin was covered with erratically-trimmed stubble.

"You there." It was a weathered, rough voice. "You lookin' for the whores? I got a couple who ain't busy." Still, he didn't sound convinced that this was what Jackson was looking for. Most people who came for his girls were regulars, and usually anyone new came with one of his previous customers.

He drew the heel of his boot across the dust in front of him.

[Jackson LaCroix]

Jax leaned across the shadow's length. He brushed by the figure. The night laid it's fingers deep along the ridges of alleys, folding the rotted wood into the crush of damp love like a claw mark. What he wanted wasn't so simple. The man's body kept rhythm with the cold shroud of a raven, running it's every talon over the hollow boards like the flap of a whispering door.

What he hunted was an object. Of all the things here worth stealing, which bounty really made it as far down the city's intestines as the markets. True anarchy or a natural order, Jackson was after the source of this avarice. The veil of commerce lifted only by the fists and fingers of Syndicates. How many wyrms slept beneath this slag licking their lips for the touch of mailable gold?

.. And how many informants would sell his questions to the highest bidder. Who was the one voice that betrayed everyone equally? Yshul, but would LaCroix bend to ask a fickle blessing. no. It was the priest he wanted. A figure so devout to the absence of property, relieving these cartels of their dues was as easy as untying a noose. The man's gaze fell over the city, both familiarizing himself with direction, territory, affiliation and locale, searching for a black handed missionary or a den desperate to hire blood to turn the tide of which way it's color flowed.

[Liminal]

The man, once passed by, was soon forgotten. He gave Jackson no further trouble. One learned not to bother people who were searching for something in Sunberth.

The alleyways formed a veritable maze. Sunberth wasn't known for its organization, to say the least, and it took some time before the pattern to the slapdash buildings and winding passages began to emerge. It seemed to be a city composed entirely of dark corners.

When Jackson stopped walking, he was in front of a worn brick building that didn't look much different from any of the others nearby. The windows were boarded up, but the door was open, and a man was standing in the doorway.

"You lookin' fer somethin', stranger?" The voice was rough, almost dusty. "Ya ain't gonna find anything here by walkin' around an' gawkin', that's fer sure." He seemed completely certain of this statement, which he did not qualify.

[Jackson LaCroix]

Raising an eyebrow, the stranger ran his calm over the line of the jaw. The question had an easy answer. One honest man - but that wasn't LaCroix's response. Closer to the point but driven to the hilt with callous impartiality. Didn't need a lantern to find that.

"Trouble and a priest for what comes after."

He stopped, breathing in the air.

"But I'll start with Water."

[Liminal]

"Ain't much of a place to be looking for water," the man observed. "Most people here prefer blood."

He shifted his weight, leaning harder against the door jamb. "Nor for priests either. But trouble...we got trouble in spades, stranger. 'Most any kind you'd care for, and plenty more as what you wouldn't." The night was uncommonly still save for the man's conversation.

"So, stranger, what's your poison?" It was a neutrally-asked question, and it was hard to tell exactly how Jackson was supposed to take it. Not that it would likely stop the man from answering.

After all, this conversation might be what he was here for.

[Jackson LaCroix]

Trouble with talking, is it made a man thirsty. The human had only a second of patience for useless words, so he made those he did use count while stepping forward.

"The Syndicates Houses and a Shrine of Yshul." Cross's voice rang evenly into the silence.

"Where. - And whatever you want for it best cost less then what your life is worth to mine."

[Liminal]

"Syndicates come and go," the man replied. "Especially in Sunberth, where order's the dirtiest word going. But, if you want something current, best place to go is Tall Johnny's. His organization's got plenty of pull, but he ain't averse to talking to newcomers. Otherwise, you can try the Underground."

Then he gave a rasping laugh, which sounded like nothing so much as a cat in the last throes of agony. "Stranger, this whole town's a shrine to Yshul. We ain't got nothing more specific, not that I've seen. Her face is in every shadowy corner of Sunberth, if you ain't too busy to see it."

He spat on the ground. "I can show you the Underground, if that's the sickness you'd like to kill you. I've been open, and if you've got a miza or two as a token of appreciation, I'd figure that's far below the going price of a...contact."