RP:An Uncanny Interlude

Part of the A Line Drawn in the Sand Arc

Cenril Theater

Laezila was fussing with the very normal entourage that was milling about her in a separate room than Kasyr, their dyes and scissors all unwelcome and protested throughout. In fact, though despite her lack of physical protest and fending off of the other employees, her verbal accusations and objections to each change might be overheard by as far as the theatre itself. However, Kasyr's entourage made little, if any noise; it was as if each were muted except for the ambient sound of their jerky, fluidless movements and shuffles. Even with the Kensai placing his hand on the hilt of his weapon, they seemed to take little care or notice -even further, they didn't even seem like they were actually accomplishing anything; they just moved items around and shuffled about. But the rage was not hidden. It was there, present, overwhelming and from all directions. It was a rage that was both bottomless and all-consuming, and it was coupled with a damned hunger that could never be satisfied. The problem with the ferocity and fury of the anger and the hunger was that it was encompassing that it seemed to originate from everywhere at once.

Kasyr is on edge. To be precise, he's been on edge ever since Xalious- and the reminder that both Ahkall and Gospel's machinations weren't just in the background, but not coming to the forefront. Which is perhaps why something else now twisted in his guts, something darker now churning there as he finds themselves in the midst of their games, and reminded of just what they inflicted on him. There's a rage bubbling up in the Kensai, which creeps into his voice as he calls out sharply, “AHKALL! Show yourself!” Beyond that, however, Kasyr doesn't move- his right thumb simply pressed up against his swords hilt, as he awaits for this situation to go amiss properly.

Mcracken had thought to soothe the high dudgeon which events at the other end of Cenril had put him in, by seeking out the house of song he’d heard tell of in the tavern a few streets away. The ocean had offered little succour at all from this state; it pulled at his mimic-flesh uncomfortably while change to his natural form was forsaken to him. Few clues had come from tavern-rumours and subtle conversational paths about the identity of the wretch responsible for this sorry state of affairs, and so it was to music Mac turned for a modicum of peace, if any was to be found in this city full of bickerers and slavers. He made a quiet path into the theater, mandolin slung on a frayed string strap across one shoulder, the man-body he wore festooned in the customary cast-offs of a creature wholly unconcerned with material things beyond the bounds of his beloved abyss. But, before he’d taken too many paces within, it became clear to the Seaborn that peace was here, too, worse than elusive; the sounds polluting the building’s air were only amplified by the structure of the place, designed to magnify auditory vibrations, and the sense of it all on his skin prickled like a sea-wasp’s deadly caress. It was tempting to simply do what came naturally to him and turn on his bare heel to leave – the puerile arguings of landwalkers were so far beneath his attention.. except, lately, they were not quite so, and here was perhaps a chance to learn something.. So on he crept, keeping himself as hidden as he could, betrayed perhaps only by the creak of his pseudo-bones, which could have been merely the complaints of an old building settling on its stumps.

But the song in this place, at the moment, was rage and violence. At least, that which surrounded Kasyr; the drow woman herself, Laezila, was in yet another room further away from the main stage, and more finnickily obstructed both in audibility and passage, let alone visibility. She was fussing, protesting, and being an overall nuisance for the crew that was redoing her visage and countenance, to the point where Kasyr's sharp shout and call for the sand wyrm responsible for hunting him was unheard. But the Kensai's luck prevailed; it was the shuffling of a creature that had neither been heard from or felt by the Eldritch abomination before that lessened the overwhelming rage -it did not fade or abate, but rather, distanced itself. The arrival of Mcracken caused Ahkall to retreat -for now. That cadre of stagehands? Without the wyrm to animate them, they fell dead in lifeless heaps of husks that were their bodies on the stage floor.

Kasyr finds himself at once relieved, and confused. Twice now, has Ahkall shown up in his vicinity, effectively stalking his way towards the revenants location, if only to back off despite the revenants ...disadvantage. The only difference, was this time the Kensai at least could tell someone new had entered the scene- though the significance of anything beyond a new source of emotions being in his vicinity is null and nil. Thus, the swordsman attends to the current situation at hand- which is to say, the heap of corpses splayed about the ground, one of which he gingerly taps with his foot, in an endeavour to provoke one of the bodies should they not be thoroughly empty vessels. “...nope. Still dead.” The bodies, in and of themselves, elicit little more than a certain discomfort at the current influence of his opposition- and a certain degree of disdain at what sort of explanations he was going to need. With a sigh, the Kensai simply 'borrows' a few bottles of dye from the shelves the corpse-puppets had been adjusting, and then removes himself from what is essentially a rather damning crime scene. He needed to figure out an alibi right quick. -Thankfully- he hadn't just eviscerated the lot of them the first moment his hackles had gone up.

Mcracken was not wholly unfamiliar with the foul practises which permit the dead to rise and ambulate, though it had been so long since he’d witnessed or even pondered the existence such things that it took a moment for the concurrent, lifeless thumps of the ‘stagehands’ to register as anything more than a complete surprise to him. That scant moment ticked past, while one sea-green eye and its pearly, vacant twin scoured over the fallen carcasses, and then remembrance trickled into the fore of his mind – where there were animated dead, there was always a spell-caster somewhere, pulling their strings. Logic would have it that the sole creature left standing among the corpses was likely their master, but the one living individual who came into range of Mac’s purvey now reeked of … what? Death, yes, but not the lingering, festering magics he recalled from aeons past, that could wrench a maggoty body from its rest like a mussel plucked out of its shell. On the Seaborn’s pale skin erupted a scattering of dermal rings, faintly blue, then brightening to an electric hue, visible where rags did not obscure them. The vibrational stench here was still, far above and beyond the physical one, redolent of the same type of foulness polluting the coral keep, albeit a fainter twist of that terrible power, and so once again the mimic-man was spurred to continue his path into the theatre, but with greater caution and a deal more trepidation than he’d previously possessed. In the face of this odd stranger’s presence, and Kasyr’s peculiar .. flavour.. Mac grabbed for mandolin, the instrument’s strap lifted free of his shoulders and neck, and waved the thing like a mandolin-shaped white flag, “I beg thy pardon, sirrah, but I come hither to inquire for employment..” the mandolin was waved again, “as a minstrel, such that I am.” He didn’t have to try too hard to look wholly discomfited, though the way he cast his gaze over the dead men gave him ample and explicable reason for such. “I mean no harm to thee. Nor thy companion,” he added, because there were ripples of sound and vibration, though vague, formless in that moment, that implied the cat-like oddment was not alone here.

Laezila 's protests and refusals to cooperate with the other group of stagehands, these neither dead nor possessed but active in the completion of their task to give the little drow vampire a new look, had since quieted with the sounds that originated from the room that Kasyr was in. That quietness became an eerie lack of sound that harbored her fear and panic when the stranger addressed the Kensai and spoke about his companion -meaning the wanted woman herself. With a price of forty-thousand gold on her head, it wasn't anything to be proud of when a stranger recognized her presence when she had thought herself the advantage. Thus, her gray-toned face with the waning visibility of the claw-swipe-scar that ran across it, courted by raven locks and dark brown eyes, halfway poked out from behind the curtain in order to scrutinize not only this new stranger, but look to Kasyr for what, exactly, she should do; the glint of a knife in the reflection of a mirror behind her might give evidence that she was not unarmed, but in fact holding the weapon behind her back.

Kasyr is in the process of straightening out the vest he was currently wearing, when he realizes he's the subject of further scrutiny – though this at least doesn't appear to be courtesy of a nigh other-wordly horror. Oooh. And it had manners, and a capacity to say words beyond 'Hate. Hunger.' or iterations of the same. Thus, the Kensai's more than willing to at least turn to address the newcomer- even if he's not quite at ease to draw his hand away from one of the katana's sheathed at his hip. Especially given the acute awareness the newcomer seemed to possess, “Je vous demande votres apologies. I even beg your forgiveness, in fact. But I'd be hard pressed to find you any work in this theatre, monsieur. Not for a lack of positions, because, je suis certain- I am positive, even, that a handful of new positions have recently become available. Rather, because I'm simply a patron to this place- albeit a bit more misfortunate than most.” There's something appropriately theatrical to the Kensai's speech, even as he takes in the sight of the newcomer. Was he here by himself? Really, the Kensai can only hope the damn stage hands can do their work so he can appropriately figure out an exit strategy.

Mcracken’s gaze flickered peripherally toward a different ripple, that of the theater’s ostentatious drapery, but of course the series of inaudibly high pitched ‘blips’ emitted from deep within his throat had revealed Laezila’s presence to him before her hand had reached for the curtain. He did not need to also spy the mirror-glint to surmise that such a creature probably had teeth and claws, steely or otherwise, and was primed for their liberal application, for the waves it gave off ‘stunk’ of rage and fear, like a moray eel trapped in a den not its own. But this new presence too still did not carry the pungent tone of that which he sought.. and thus was of no direct concern to him. That was why the Seaborn’s attention overtly remained on Kasyr, whose life or death at the whist of this erstwhile “companion” mattered to him not a jot, in case the talkative stranger turned out to be the other creature’s object of ire. Mac lowered the mandolin, curving the corners of his mouth upward into the land-walker signal for “friendly”, “Ah,” he said, to Kasyr’s admission of mere patronage, “Mayhap it be better for me to return when the uh, manager, be present,” yes, he was verbally side-stepping the corpses, even as his legs achieved the physical equivalent, taking a few paces closer to Kasyr and no more. “For I gather that thou art somewhat.. occupied, sirrah, with what must be, as it were, business of a, uh, private nature.” That smile widened, just a little bit, while one hand left the mandolin’s well-tuned neck to scritch the shaggy black mop of hair upon the Seaborn’s head.

Laezila neither lessened her hold upon that dagger nor further unveiled herself from behind the curtain, of which half of her face was protruding so that she could witness the further approach from the stranger toward the Kensai. It made her panic heighten just a bit, made more apparent in the way that her fingers tightened their grip on the handle of her weapon behind her back. But as dangerous as she was, she couldn't be that much more dangerous than a frightened animal -the true danger was a different fiend; a sand wyrm that was tainted by the Dark Immortal's power and manipulated by Kasyr's own devil, Gospel. The hatred and hunger that personified the wyrm thrummed, could be felt -the duo of Ahkall and Gospel were watching, and their hunt of Kasyr was getting closer to its peak. They wanted the Kensai to know that he was being hunted. They wanted him to know they were getting closer. But they didn't make their appearance known any moreso. Instead, it was just those three; drow, stranger, and Kasyr, and a handful of stage hands. Laezila still sought Kasyr's eye-contact, for some sort of signal at whether she should flee, attack, or come out of hiding.

Kasyr fights a brief impulse to shift back at the stranger's approach, though he fails to resume his lax posture- instead shifting into something more belying a sense of alertness. Despite the tension rife in his stance, he still manages to offer a fascimile of a smile, his eyes flickering between the newcomer, and the door. It always helped to keep an eye on the various exits in a room, and whether further complications were in the process of filing in. Especially when you got the overbearing sense that someone was staring so hard at you, it was boring holes in the back of your head. “My occupation of the area is apt to be coming to an end shortly. So if you're in a hurry, I wouldn't concern yourself too much. Myself et my companion will be out soon enough, et then you can attend to your business soon enough.” And really, if the Kensai could convince the stranger to linger, it provided all sorts of lively opportunities. Like placing a stranger at the scene of a crime, and deflecting attention away from the Kensai and towards the newcomer, whilst providing a fair bit of incentive for those stage hands present to disperse, and therefore further cover up his tracks. Good times to be had for all. Except, well, the bard fellow. ...Kasyr's ears promptly perk up in an almost bouncy sequence of flicks- before his head dips back to stare at Laezila. That was the staring feeling, right. She get's a shooing gesture, and a rather pointed, “You're almost done, right?” before his attention flicks right back to Mcracken, “Probably almost done.”

Mcracken’s guise of gormless, nervous affability slipped a little, just for the space of a breath, for it was obvious to him that whatever power had controlled the hapless dead and lingered still as a murkish, malevolent echo here, resided neither in the flesh of Kasyr, nor in this dark-skinned creature who may or may not be about to reveal itself in its entirety. In any case, Mac sensed nothing of that which he, himself, was hunting, and thus nothing happening here was directly his concern. Except, a vague tug of curiosity toward the dark elf.. a maiden perhaps?.. the bits of it could see seemed to possess features of a delicacy generally analogous to land-walker females, but owned a hardness of energy not shared by many females above the surface. This one reminded him, somehow, of sharks.. Were he not still so unsure of any malingering ill-effects of his exposure to the “poison” surrounding the coral castle, he may have spared some curiosity toward Kasyr ,.. and his weapon, which sang a song in the ether unlike any he’d heard before. But as it happened, he was still unsure. If the Goddess be so disposed, he thought, mayhap she’d direct his feet toward this bewildering creature again.. “Nay, sirrah,” he’s quit scritching at himself, by now, and the hand was employed to make a sweeping gesture toward the unstringed fleshy ‘puppets’. “I shall take my leave of thee anon, for strange things here be afoot, and I…” he still wasn’t going to look directly at the drow, until .. she?.. showed itself in full. “.. have no desire to dabble my toes in such.. uh, disfortuitous happenstance.” And he started edging, slowly, and with that gormless smile pasted on his face, away from the pair – toward that exit through which he’d recently entered.

Laezila wasn't exactly the staring feeling, despite the coincidental timing, but that would be made apparent later when Kasyr might realize that the feeling would never be shaken. At the moment, when Kasyr made a shooing gesture to the little vampire whose face was clad in a lightening complexion that faded her claw-swipe-scar that marred her face otherwise and eased the saturation of her skin color to a light gray, Laezila jerked her frame back behind the curtain. Normally vivid blue eyes were now colored a dark brown, and what was once glittering white hair now was raven in hue. It was a brief gesture, before her head poked out from behind there in full, and she stuck out her bright pink tongue at Kasyr derisively. Yes, she was almost done. The curtain was yanked over her and the petite female's entire form was veiled behind it. Then, it was pulled open -or rather, sharply ripped open, to expose the girl entirely. Her hair was done up with a few stray curled strands that twirled down along her cheekbones in front of her pointed ears. Bare, slender shoulders were on display, as was her collarbone and the smooth flesh over it; she was dressed in a strapless, form-fitting sapphire-colored dress. Her arms, gloved to her elbows with a thin semi-transparent material, "Are you serious?" The girl said in exasperation, "-Why- am I dressed like this?"

Kasyr 's attention remains on Mcracken for a few more moments as he withdraws from the scene- though the Kensai's posture slowly relaxes as the bard grows more distant. Sure, an alibi was gone- but at least there was a slightly reduced chance for imminent ambush shenanigans. ...Slightly. “Have a good evening, Monsieur. Et a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Perhaps we'll meet again, at a more prosperous occasion... but je m'en doute. I'm rather calamitous company.” The sound of the curtain shuffling behind him draws the swordsman's attention back towards Laezila- and earns her an approving whistle. Well, one part approving, one part meant to fluster, “Probably because it suits you. On y va? I had issues on my end. A difficult subject, et all that.” A pause, and the Kensai casually adds, “We should likely depart shortly, however.” Because, really- a bunch of dead bodies meant there was going to be uncomfortable questions soon. And whilst their method of death and state of...being was likely to draw a fair number of questions- it also meant there was going to be a number of suspicion directed at him. ...Though, “Mmm.”

To the Seaborn, the grey-hued female may as well have been a misadventuring mountain-sheep, or clad in old fishing nets, said his cursory glance over her body, which he found unattractive (for she had no silvery tail, nor were her terrible paucity of limbs covered in shell-pink suction cups), and her attire, for which he had no comparison and could not have cared less about, if he had. But that was not the reason he winced, as he cast that gaze – it happened that long exposure to the dry air was taking its toll on a body Mac could not presently exchange for the natural form that would offer relief, and which could better withstand the pressure inherent to the vasty deeps, the fathomless fathoms of his beloved and dearly missed undersea den. He’d pause in his backward retreat while Kasyr spoke – ah, one whose speech was not unlike the poesy of former centuries, music to his ears, indeed – and paused a beat longer to drop from the waist into a deep bow, his free hand undulating in a most archaic gesture of respect. He rose again to his full and spindly height, and spoke briefly before turning to make his retreat, “Fare thee well, sirrah, “ his pearly eye swivelled blindly toward Laezila, “And milady, take a care to walk safe where’er thou may goest.” He had a feeling they’d best pay heed to that, for there was yet a sense of something there, something dire and hungry.. watching.

Laezila 's hands immediately moved to her slender hips to perch there, one of the former cocked to the side somewhat arrogantly as she stared both incredulously and accusingly toward the Kensai; surely he had put the stagehands up to this outfit. Though, she had to admit, it rather suited her tastes, especially from her former career choice as a matron; the feeling of being in an expensive dress was actually fairly nice. The approving whistle drew from the woman a pink wave along her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, before the girl actively chucked a coin at Kasyr in retaliation, "Shut up." She snapped. And the stranger, Mcracken, was leaving, and with that disturbingly haunting and eerily vague warning that had her fine brows furrowing in perplexion -naturally, she thought it something to do with the bounty, but he was gone before she could pipe up. Out of some defensive instinct, she moved toward Kasyr, most likely from his experiences in protecting her, "Guy gave me the creeps," she confessed, "like he was old. Like, real old, even among my kind." Her nose wrinkled. "I don't like it. Let's get out of here."