RP:Corny Runs the Gauntlet, Part Three

Background

This is part of the Kurgan's Run story arc.

For a man who spent several lifetimes as a statue, Cornelius Von Penzance has quite a colourful history, not all of which was dashing foppery and derring-do acts of crime. At last, the Dark Fortress leads Cornelius into a nightmare he's kept hidden, even from himself, for three centuries.

Meanwhile, Back In Not-Really-Vailkrin

Even now, time warps and compresses in Cornelius' mind, and the hours spent drilling footwork and blade techniques flick by in a second. The haze of time passed wraps around him, like the silk sheets of the otherwise empty bed in the Scarlet Phoenix Hostel, and he finds himself meandering in a deliberately chaotic route through the marketplace until he finds the scrimshaw merchant who acts as his drop-off point. The merchant, a grizzled old sailor with one ear and ragged bitemarks across his face, grimaces as Cornelius approaches. "Ye'll be here fer the Vrznak-bone wiv a nekkid lady on then, yer lordship?" Cornelius raises an eyebrow "Vrznak? Making creatures up now, are we? Does it improve sales?" He hands over the coin, even as the sailor inwardly smiles at the dandy's ignorance. The sailor had seen a Vrznak once, when it had taken a jollyboat and its crew. The second mate at the time had been foolishly lured into launching the jollyboat to investigate its illuminated appendage where it had shone underneath the waves. Remembering its vast expanse of teeth he grins at the foppish assassin "Cross me palm wiv gold then, ye landlubber, and I'll tell ye no more tales." Cornelius smiles and hands over several coins, retrieving the small package which would contain not bone, but a small glass vial. He enters a small tent to the sailor's side, left purposely empty this morning for his use, and carefully transfers the contents of the vial across to his new needle ring. Jobbie, as always, had come through. Poor mule was probably going to get eaten. The donkeys would likely suffer more than the mule, though, if they were to be test subjects. It was time to establish his alibi, and browse the markets until the appointed time neared, and he would have to approach the merchant marked for death.

The market was, as markets tend to be, a bustling place, the true crux of Vailkrin society, where all classes of persons of all natures and breeds mingled in a chaotic hub of sellers and buyers, tourists and the ‘opportunists’ who preyed upon them, where the wealthy and the poor alike could hardly help but rub shoulders – if not exactly on purpose, or too closely. Among the milling masses ran ragged platoons of urchins, those children of poverty employed by various local bullies to milk coin from foppish pockets. And it was to a particular foppish pocket that one small, dirty hand crept – the barefooted owner of said appendage could not be more than seven, his eyes bright in their darker sockets, his hair a nest for lice and grime. The hand was trembling, as it reached toward Cornelius.

Nearby, a woman in a white apron was selling peas, which she’d shuck freshly from their pods. Persons stopping to purchase her wares paled, hurried on, whispering and making signs of warding against evil, or simply escaped to happier venues, trying to forget the sight of the tiny, bloody foetuses curled inside every pod the woman shelled, which mewed weakly as they were torn from their shared, vegetable wombs and thrown into a bowl full of other little bodies, in various stages of dying and decomposition.

But perhaps Cornelius didn’t notice her, what with the sundry secretive winks and nods he was offered by passers-by and merchants ‘in the know’, or greetings from local friends and acquaintances of the Von Penzance household. Or possibly, too, the terrified child who was one inch from making good on the dare the strange rag-and-bone man had made him, offering him an urchin’s jackpot worth of coin for stealing from the ‘arse in the posh get-up, o’er there’.

Cornelius takes in the familiar sights and smells, carefully noting the locations of marketplace guards and those bravos and servants known to him as employed by rival houses. The location and clothing of each will be vital for the denouement of this day. It is with an indecent glee that Cornelius looks forward to their helpless frustration later this day. As a smile comes to his lips, his peripheral vision catches a small movement. He drops to one knee in a whirling motion, as if he has dropped a coin, causing his cloak to wrap around the child and obscure him from sight. He whispers "Child, this is a bad business to be in unless you are good at it. Tell me who put you up to this, and I shall give you this." 'This' was a silver coin produced with a street-magician's flourish from the child's nose. "Actually, lad, I've a better plan. Here's a second silver - I want you to drop that coin in the hand of they who hired you, and then get the hell out of the marketplace. Can you handle a little adventure lad?" He quickly stands again, making a show of retrieving a copper coin from the ground even as his cloak falls back into place, allowing the child to make his decision.

It wasn’t a hard decision to make. The boy would be paid, as promised, for doing precisely what Cornelius had asked him to do, assuming he wasn’t quietly murdered in the process. It was his lucky day, though – and the boy grabbed the coins as a starving dog snaps up fallen scraps, shoving them in a tattered pocket before scampering off toward a shadier end of the market, where the stalls were meant for the poor and ill-bred, their wares the remnants and leavings of finer establishments, the refuse of the middle classes handed down from grimy hand to grimy hand, until they wound up on a wobbly table as junk sold for a single copper to whoever was desperate enough to need such rubbish. At a table laden with shreds of old cloth and tarnished, battered tin, a creature more akin to his own wares than a person shuffled, hunched and claw-handed, peering with strange eyes from under a broad-brimmed and sloppy bit of headwear that once had deserved to be called a hat. It was to this unfortunate booth that the boy ran, now, turning a fearful and hungry glance back now and then to see if his ‘mark’ had followed.

Years of wandering this market as child and man allowed Cornelius to follow the youth surreptitiously, a subtle dance through market stalls, every twitch of the boy's shoulder forewarning for Cornelius to weave out of line of sight with a smile at a merchant's nod, a nod at a lady's wink, and a raised eyebrow at those who glared at him with hate-filled eyes. Oh, the latter all had good cause, for one reason or another, but for now they are ignored. Cornelius is most curious as to why an incompetent child would be used to approach him and pick his pockets when his reputation among urchins as a difficult mark was well established. The lad's attempts to spot Cornelius would fail and the dandy watches as the lad gives the man the silver coin, and takes a purse containing more of its kind in return. As the urchin runs off, Cornelius strolls over with a mildly curious expression "What's your game, old-timer. You could have got that child killed, wot. Hardly civil behaviour, that."

The Rag and Bone Man shuffled closer, his pronounced hunch giving him an air of looming, aided perhaps by that misshapen hat and eyes that seemed less eyes than dull lights under the gloom of its brim. He pointed a clawed finger toward the dandy, and words emerged from out of the hat’s deep shade like an ill wind given voice, “Ah…..” His breath was scented, oddly, of pine and cypress as he spoke, though his lips did not visibly move, assuming he had any, hard to tell, in the gloom under that brim. “When is a man not a man? When the birds all know his name, and pay homage to it daily.” His eyes glimmered, as he fossicked through the refuse on his table, now, apparently searching for something. “When is a widower not a widower?” he muttered, hunching over further as he leaned down to peer at something held, carefully, within his cupped hands. “When he has taken Death for his bride….” The shabby garments he wore rippled, while the man peered more closely at whatever it was he held. “Questions, answers, they’re all the same. All the same.. in time.” With that, he flung himself upright with a resounding ‘crack’ from his straightening spine, hands flying open like the wings of a strange, deformed bird – and out of them flew a pigeon.

Cornelius resists the urge to roll his eyes as the man starts to speak. It seems he is to be the victim of some madman's ramblings. The fresh earthiness of the man's breath, though, keeps him wary. Such a man's breath would typically be fetid from neglect of hygiene, not reminiscent of a forest in spring. As the pigeon is launched Cornelius instinctively steps back and to the side, hand to sabre's hilt and blade half-drawn before he recognises the bird for what it is. His lips twist in annoyance at his own reaction. Perhaps he had let himself become a tad bit too tightly strung in preparation for today's perfomance. "Very funny, old man. If the answers are all the same, how about giving me a straight one - I'm sure it would be no bother."

“Penny for your thoughts, they say.” Almost as if to negate the appellation of ‘old man’, the figure had shed his illusion of bent decrepitude, and now stood tall, if still ragged and rendered near-faceless by the persistent shadows cast by his headwear. He was taller, the hunch vanished entirely, his shoulders set in the manner of a man who’d fought and won many a battle. One broad hand, uncrabbed now, its fingered thick with grime in the cracks of its weathered skin, was thrust out, expectantly. “You may say it, too,” he chuckled, exhaling that scent, the trees of coffin-wood. “And you might hear something that’s…true, and more than true.”

Cornelius laughs merrily "My silver already in your pocket, and you ask for a penny. A fine jest, but why not?" He snaps his fingers and a copper coin appears - the same one he 'picked up' from the street earlier. Cornelius spins it through the air so that it lands on the lunatic's outstretched hand "A penny then, for your thoughts, old bean"

The penny .. did not drop. The Rag and Bone Man’s palm below it, the coin spun slowly on its axis, an inch above. The market was abruptly silent, its denizens frozen like flesh statues. Only the two conversing seemed to possess life.; The strange stall keeper crackled oddly as he spoke, like fallen, withered leaves trodden on by the boots of a traveller. “Time will be your greatest enemy,” he said, and the shadows wreathing his face grew darker, so that his eyes took on the appearance of distant lamps on a moonless night, faintly yellow in the gloom. “And your greatest friend.” The coin fell then, and the sounds of the market’s throng crashed around the dandy. Should he look away, only for a split second, he’d find the stall-keeper gone, the stall a mess of rotting cloth – and that single copper, now clasped in his own hand.

Cornelius blinks, shakes his head, and pockets the copper coin again. As he walks away from the bizarre old man and his peculiar scent, he forcibly pushes the strange meeting and conversation from his mind as he focuses his entire attention on the task ahead. Methodically he charts a chaotic course around the marketplace, buying odds and ends on letters of credit - a bolt of black satin here, a new wardrobe there, a small clock for his study. With each step, and each purchase, his alibi is established in advance, and his course takes him closer to his prey in both time and place.

Cornelius knows this particular mark as the hotheaded younger son of a wealthy mercantile family who had previously sought alliance with the House of Penzance. Seeking to gain access to a more extensive and exclusive clientele, The negotiations were stalemated by the machinations of Cornelius' father - machinations which left the Marveci family short of a warehouse and in a state of frustrated anticipation for some shift in politics, anything to allow them the leverage to reopen the negotiations from a stronger position. Cornelius ponders the peculiar instructions attached to this task, ones which almost demanded that Garath use Cornelius as the blade for the hirer's hidden hand. Cornelius stops, blinks, laughs aloud to the startled looks of those close by. The personality behind the assignment has coalesced within his mind, and he is certain his assumption is accurate. Damn his father and his sense of humour - the old bastard could have just asked him directly, even if it was more prudent to remain an anonymous 'patron' of Garath's coterie. Still, Cornelius had an obligation not to disappoint his old man in this. Penzance pride was on the line, and it was a more controlling influence than any threats, begging, or cajoling his family could ever bring to bear upon him.

Cornelius approaches the silk merchant, Matteo Marveci, and the small silk-screened pavillion from which the young man did business. Cornelius knows that the tension that enters Matteo's body at the sight of Cornelius is not out of any precognition for what was to come, but stemmed entirely from the relationship between their two families, and past insults traded. With a broad smile Cornelius strolls up to the dark-haired merchant, whose narrow face manages a wary smile of its own. "Marveci old bean, a pleasure of course, to see you doing so well with these fabrics." A slight insinuation there, on 'fabrics', lending it an almost vulgar connotation.

Matteo's sales skills keep his smile, strained as it is, plastered to his face "Why Penzance, you old rogue. Always happy to do business with your family." A neat riposte, Cornelius mentally acknowledges, with the emphases placed on 'rogue' and 'your family'.

With a grin Cornelius makes an insultingly low offer for several bolts of white and crimson silk, and the game is on. The haggling becomes a fencing match in and of itself, Cornelius taking every opportunity to insinuate shortcomings on Matteo's behalf, forcing the young merchant to physically restrain himself from reaching for his own rapier at least twice in the negotiations. The haggling continues, and then the moon reaches the point which signified the time was almost upon him. Cornelius twists his needle ring while examining a bolt of cloth "Really? Are you sure the silkworms weren't underfed or something?" and a subtle movement has him prick the merchant in the elbow, the alchemist's concoction swiftly working on Matteo's bloodstream "I have to say, Matteo, that your stock leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe you should become a jewel merchant. You're hardly going to make a killing in the silk business with your poor temper."

With the understated intonation of 'jewel', 'killing' and 'temper' Cornelius plants the seed in his prey's mind, and with the influence of Jobbie's formula casting off all restraint Matteo unleashes his famous temper "I have -Had It- with your damn patronising ways, Penzance! If you think you can get away with insulting the Marveci family any longer, you are making a deadly mistake!" As Matteo glares, his hands clenching in pent up fury, Cornelius raises an eyebrow and smiles derisively as he pats the furnishings of his rapier. "Perhaps not even a jewel merchant, with that temper, old bean". As hoped, Matteo grabbed at his rapier "Jewel Merchant? You bastard, I've got a Duel for you, and the price shall be your death!"

Cornelius waits, his mind already in that dark place of analysis, and Matteo's movements as he draws the rapier tell him everything he needs to know about the coming attack. Matteo gathers his left leg closer to the right leg as he draws blade, foreshadowing a lunge on a passing step with the intent to run Cornelius through unarmed. With derisive smile still in place, the dandy lets Matteo draw and make his lunge, unsheathing his own blade as he begins a swift and elegant pirouette, his rapier deflecting Matteo's lunge off course even as it is drawn. As he completes his spin he sends the pommel of his rapier to smash into Matteo's face as the merchant begins to traverse away from the dandy, stunning him for a moment even as he stomps a kick into Matteo's side. With that kick pushing Matteo away, Cornelius gets the clearance needed to extend into his own lunge, taking Matteo Marveci through the voicebox.

As the man clutches at his throat Cornelius calmly steps forward and delivers another thrust through the eyesocket and murmurs "Sorry, old bean, but you attacked me while I was unarmed. One cannot let such an insult stand. Nemo Me Impune Lacessit.

He calls out to the crowd "You are witness to this! Matteo Marveci did unsheathe blade and assault me while mine yet rested in its scabbard! As an act of self-defense, I am thus innocent of his death." Inwardly Cornelius smiles. Garath wouldn't have thought of doing it like that, the albino bastard. As far as the dandy was concerned, for all the elf's speed and skill, he outdid him on style every time.

There were grumbles and mutters mixed in with the hearty cries of “Aye!” and other acknowledgements of the dandy’s apparent innocence. Several persons clustered around the body of the fallen man, one woman weeping and tearing her hair, the men all wearing and hate-filled expressions. But too, the Marvecis had enemies enough that Cornelius would earn a grateful or cunning grin from more than one as the onlookers dispersed.

One among them, dressed in a traveller’s clothes, tipped his low-tugged hat with an extremely pale hand. Garath hardly bothered keeping tabs on his underlings and lackeys, but Penzance was neither of those, and while the albino elf would have sooner cut his own tongue from head than admit it, there were two that he did keep a very close eye on. If anyone was going to usurp his position in this city, it was the fop - or possibly, given time, Tenebrae, the stray protégé he’d taken in and named for her love of the shadows and peculiar… gifts. She was a rum ‘un, as he often said…

“Murderer!” somebody hissed, a tomato thrown toward the dandy. Garath only grinned, and vanished into the throng.

Cornelius neatly sidesteps the thrown tomato with a smile and a bow, and takes a step away from the fallen body - even as a ripple passes through his awareness and his next step lands him out of a carriage and in front of his estate. Cornelius is in a festive mood now - the day's most important business transaction had been a grand success, and the Penzance family would thankfully acknowledge his finesse with the negotiations. Striding up the cobbled path to the mansion he pats the pommel of the elaborately furnished rapier seated by his left hip. The blade has been cleaned of the transaction's history, but the merchant who had hired him as a negotiator would know of his success before a day had passed. His hand opens the main door, and he expects to hear the sound of laughter - the butler, Gerard, was ever attentive and should have alerted the children to his homecoming. Cornelius is, however, greeted by a silent and empty foyer. Something of his good mood drains away as the sense of something amiss grows. Deep down, beneath the illusion, his mind screams, tries to wrest control back - but the presence of something else seems to muffle that voice, and Cornelius walks into the one memory he would otherwise never have willingly relived.

And that was the point, really, all that preamble, just to unfurl the one memory that would cause the dandy to become completely immersed in this elaborate hoax, tacked together with memories unstrung from the tightly-woven tapestry of Cornelius’ mental landscapes. He was hard work, but also one of the hardest for the Pool’s dark creator to manipulate. And how Eldritch loved a challenge… The chaotic mage, having fed thoroughly on horror and misery, enough to keep that upstart Kurgan from interfering too much, from gathering his broken essence together enough to create a problem.. having feasted on the minds of those lured into this, his trap, the Chaos Lord grinned – or affected the feeling of such an expression, unworn since that brat of a girl had banished him – and once more plumbed the depths of Cornelius’ mental abysses for more fuel to add the emotional conflagration even now rising in the dandy’s heart of hearts. And all too easy now. All too easy for him tear that last layer of scar tissue off an old wound, opening it, laying it bare to the hunger of the disembodied vampire who’d long foregone the need for blood, in favour of finer, less tangible fare….

Caught helplessly in the pattern of the memory which still scars his very soul, Cornelius is compelled to advance through the memory as if it were an event newly conceived from Ill Fortune's womb. He does not, cannot, admire the mahogany of the stairwell bannisters this night, the luxurious wallhangings and paintings which line the walls. Instead, as tense with foreboding as he had been three hundred years prior, Cornelius approaches the stairwell. The chandeliers above rattle and send both light and shadows in crazed patterns across the dandy's path as he feels a draught descending in a rush from the rooms above - and with it comes a sound and a smell which sends fear through his very being.

Screams, thin and high-pitched, cascade down the stairwell accompanied by the thick, heavy scent of iron. As if on cue his foot slips and Cornelius starts with a glance downwards to where the stairs pool with blood from a dark-skinned arm drooped over the bannister: the butler Gerard's arm, two fingers missing, flesh rent and skin flayed back from the hand with bone and flesh glistening beneath a garnishing of gore. The screams compel Cornelius upwards, boots growing wet with blood as he hurries along the corridor to the dining room. A scream is cut off amidst a melodic crescendo of laughter, the terminated voice bearing the timbre of a young boy, and something within Cornelius grows cold with terror and rage. The laughter echoes through his ears, reverberates until his eyes blur with moisture. His wife's laughter, normally heard at soirees and salons, has a deranged and cruel edge to it. A howl begins to build up within Cornelius, an expression of emotion unsuited to the jaded dandy, and is let slip when another scream rings out, a piercing thing of terror and pain. A young girl's scream. So loud as to make his throat raw, the howl pours out of Cornelius as he curses his wife's name with its very utterance: "Anastasia!!!"

The girl's, no, his daughter Lottie's screams ring out again and again, an almost mindless chorus of agony which grow louder, tearing into Cornelius with every step that brings him closer. He does not know when his rapier found its way into his hand - he does not even notice the bodies of the servants; their throats torn out, faces flayed from their skulls to leave red-glazed deathmasks wearing grins of bared bone. The screams build in intensity along with the frequency of the laughter, until Cornelius reaches the entrance to the dining room.

Halting his momentum with an arm to the doorjamb, Cornelius goes white with shock. His son, nailed to a wall by the expedience of letter openers and fire pokers, is painted red in his own blood. His head lols against his chest, thankfully hiding the mess of his now-absent throat, even if it cannot hide the entrails hanging from his eviscerated little torso. His mind, unable to correspond this scene with reality, stands mute and paralysed at the door, arms hanging at his side until another scream drags him back to reality - for this tormented scream addresses him directly, as the word 'Daddy!' is drawn out of bloodied lips to the accompaniment of another peal of laughter.

Cornelius' mind, too, is paralysed by the forcible recreation of his hellish past by the puppetmaster pulling the strings of his mind. He cannot speak as Anastasia; beautiful ivory-skinned Anastasia; laughs at him, holding Lottie up like a doll, and slowly draws a knife along her throat, silencing her screams once and for all "You are too late, Cornelius my love. Much too late. I have gained what you could never grant me with all your wealth and power. Eternal Beauty."

Anatasia, whose luxurious and elegant white gown is splattered and drenched with the gore of Cornelius' children, bares the fangs of a newly-turned vampire in a smile - and something breaks within Cornelius. There is no calm state available to him now, no finesse - in a frenzy he launches himself with the speed of misfortune, rapier tip clearing the space between Anastasia and the young neck she was about to sink her fangs into. Knowing a blade to be no deterrent to her kind, he grabs a candlestick, swipes it at her head, the spray of hot wax and risk of flame to her face enough to force the vain Anastasia back from his dying daughter. Hurling the candlestick at her he rips open the top of his waistcoat, revealing a pocket hidden below his cravat. With an almost bestial scream Cornelius hurls himself at his second wife, rapier slashing and thrusting as his fingers subconsciously find the vial they were searching for.

Anastasia laughs and lets a thrust through her shoulder, a triumphant gleam to her eyes as grasps hold of the rapier blade and snaps it in her hand. It is in that moment that Cornelius smashes the enchanted vial against her right cheekbone - a black, eldritch fluid splashing over her. The effect of the black dragon's blood is instantaneous, and Anastasia screams. Her scream is a match for any she has compelled from others this evening as the flesh of her burns and melts scarring even as she turns and hurls herself with supernatural speed through the open windows.

A flutter of white is the last Cornelius sees as he drops to his knees by Lottie, and hurls his grief into the night until his throat is too sore for speech. When screams are denied him, in a deranged fit he starts attacking phantom enemies, his desire for an opponent to focus his grief through too compelling to fight. He steps, slashes, and then suddenly he is in a corridor, with a faint echo of a man's mocking laughter fading in his skull.