RP:Meanwhile, Hanan

Part of the No Seaborn Left Behind Arc

Somewhere in the Dead Caves

The drow city far above is still reeling. Chaos rules streets littered with rubble and the walking dead, remnants of a war with a fallen god. Freed slaves, those not among the many who have joined the ranks of the undead, have fled blindly into the warren of tunnels surrounding Trist'Oth, only to fall victim to things far. far worse.

The disaster has clawed its way even down to the deepest caverns below. Strange and powerful creatures fuelled by the energy and intellect stored in living brains now seek only the meat, reduced to shambling shells of their former mastery. In cages, slaves and captives not yet turned to mindless minions slowly starve, perhaps eking a little water from the slimy cavern walls, some resorting to eating their fellows for survival's sake. Monsters from the tunnels rampage through these caves, as dead and hungry and the wasted drow above, though more dangerous.

An insane youngling kraken has murdered its former slave-master in a split-second loss of control and now claims lordship over the Dead Caves, though it hasn't met a Master not severely incapacitated yet, and its wild delusions thrum in waves... dark visions and mental puppetry scourge the caverns close to where it wallows.

In a space occupied by vats of slime, where infant psionic monsters until recently crawled free of used-up flesh to take their place with the Masters, one or two cages still contain victims who are both alive and ... well, not whole, exactly. But not flayed of intellect and will. The young kraken isn't powerful enough yet to maintain dominion over more than a few slaves at once, leaving most to drool and shamble like the undead they tear apart from time to time. So there's hope. Even here, in the depths of bottomless despair, where none may yet see it coming...

The “black spot” was a lot of things. To some pirates it was just a prank–give a scrap of paper with the mark on it to the new guy, watch him panic. To some it was a warning. It meant you’d better leave port soon, or else. Sometimes it was a promise: we’re going to kill you, get your affairs in order.

It was real to Hanan. So she’d left.

The first time she’d been caught they’d held her down–drunk, drugged, so stupid to let that happen–in some awful dockside basement in a no-account port town and tattooed it on her. Her black spot was an uneven mark on her left shoulder and clavicle which was visible when she wore her collar a little too open. Awful stick and poke, blurry as hell at the edges, but filled in and dark and impossible for her to forget. Then they let her go.

Okay, she thought. That’s all it was? May as well go back. But ever since that night she couldn’t hide. Like she’d been marked, like there was a little moving X on the map of every bastard she’d ever angered saying “come here, she’s here, open season." And they attacked anyone she was with, too. For long periods she could make herself inconvenient–traded her ship for a little crew-of-one sailboat and put down anchor far from any trade routes or good currents. There was quiet, then. She got good at fishing. A big fish has a bit of blood. But eventually she’d have to return to civilization. And inevitably she’d get into a fight, either enroute or when she landed. It got harder and harder to beat those guys–sometimes it was just goons and mooks, sometimes skilled hunters with all the equipment needed to take down someone like her. She always acted cocky. She always fought them off with as much flare as she could muster. She only got caught a couple times, and for all but one, she escaped.

The last gang must have learned something. They took her left leg below the knee. Not so easy to escape, then, even with the peg and the crutch they tossed her to make moving her easier.

She still dreamed about the bonesaw. She dreamed about having a home, once. Chucked that away, didn’t she? Don’t think about it. Mindflayers.

Hanan didn’t know how she got to the caves. Did they sell her to the mindflayers, looking for an end to this chase? Or did her captors get got? She wasn’t good at figuring that sort of thing out. She didn’t even really know who had put the black spot out for her anyway. Damn shame she hadn’t known anyone good at that, who liked her, who would have helped? No, mindflayers. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. She didn’t even know how long she’d been down here, with no way to account for time. Years? Years over these rutting vats, being tossed a bottle of blood once in awhile, waiting for the end? No idea about the situation above.

Hanan thought about where she was. The cage was big enough to move around in, but suspended from the ceiling with a chain. The swinging at least wasn’t torture for her. She could close her eyes and imagine she was on a ship, then. She sat there and waited, leg-and-a-half hanging over the edge between bars. It wasn’t so bad, sometimes, lately. Ghosts had started visiting her. A lot of them were rude, but at least they talked, and she didn’t have to worry about thinking of the dead, mindflayers couldn’t touch them. Sometimes she dreamed while waking, that was also nice.

She hadn’t gotten blood in a long time

In that darkness, sound is amplified. More than that, every small sound becomes a roar, to senses deprived of... well, just about everything else. So when the whisper started, it had to compete with the groans and whimpering of other caged captives, the steady and maddening drip-drip of moisture falling from the tips of stalactites. The way rich, dark blood drips from throat to floor, once the bright arterial spray has lost pressure. Kinda like that.

A deliciously, coppery scent wafts through the stink of cave mold and death, carried on someone's breath as the whisper hisses discernible words, the tone of it more than faintly mocking "I'd get you out of there, pet, but they reckon you haven't got a leg to stand on." Two pinpoints of green light turn into a gaze of wicked eyes, over which a delicate-featured pale face emerging from the gloom takes ownership. "Oh yeah, and Cornelius sends his love. Says he'll see you real soon. And you owe him a dance." A soft peal of laughter... or was it screams?... no, definitely laughter, fades with that familiar face back into the murk, and with it a parting shot, "And I promise to dance with whatever's left of you, after.."

The smell hit Hanan’s nose first, because of course it did. She tried not to think of the thirst since she couldn't control when it was sated anymore, but that was always a losing battle, wasn't it? She was surrounded by other captives who, with just a little more reach, just a brief trip beyond these bars, she could easily throw against the wall and sink her fangs in and absolutely soak herself in their blood. Somewhere in the back of her head she remembered not always having such feral desires. That was before here, and here was now.

This smell was different. Warm somehow. And when Hanan spied the eyes that went with it a soft whimper crept up her throat.

No. Not her. Hanan wasn't supposed to think about her. Mindflayers. The absolute nerve of showing up and then mentioning Cornelius of all people, that rutting fop! As if she wanted to think about that guy when–she didn't remember wrenching herself to her feet–foot–only that she was standing, leaning heavy on the bars, fangs bared and eyes burning.

“Oh yeah? Come closer and say that, you godsdamn bitch!” Was she always that pretty? Freaky, disturbing, but still. “I can wipe the floor with that bastard no matter HOW many legs I’ve got and you know–” Hanan didn't remember reaching her arm between the bars. She also didn't remember her cheeks getting wet. The face was receding. Hanan roared. “GET BACK HERE!”

“GET BACK HERE!”

“GET BACK!”

“BACK!”

Echoes reverberate off stone… or perhaps just the inside of a pirate’s skull. There’s no-one left here capable of telling Hanan which. When they cease, the lightless cave closes like a great, dark fist around the pirate, flooding mind and body with a dank, foreboding chill and a silence so deep it may as well be death. Except for that goddamn incessant dripping.

Plink.

Ploink.

Ad infinitum. Like the cruel, mad god of whatever hell this is hadn’t shut the faucet off tightly enough before it left.

Ploink.

Plink.

And then something moves in the dark. More rightly, slithers, uncoils and off it goes, slithering. Taking its time. Plink. The stale, foul air then has its suffocating gloom interrupted a fresh, salted breeze that might hit Hanan like a sharp slap. Ploink. No pale, mocking face presses through the inky murk this time, just faint noises that sound like they’re like coming to her from down a tunnel…closer and gradually closer…bringing with them dim flashes of vision, like the memory of light.

The sounds of distant sea shanties, raucous laughter and crude jokes accompany the usual sounds of clinking glasses and sloshed liquor. The room seems dark, but the table is visible and a glass of whiskey is pushed across the table. A peace offering.

"You've been gone a long time."

There's the sound of fingertips tapping against a glass bottle.

"The only rule was that you were supposed to come home."

The noise of the room fades into silence, drowned out by the crash of ocean waves.

"You took everything. You took my life and then you took the thing I love most and whatever would have been left of my soul you took with you too. You made me into this monster and so their deaths, all of their deaths, are on your hands."

A glass shatters on the table, whiskey and blood mingling across the wood in abstract patterns. The hand that hovers above the mess bears a familiar silver ring- there's a faded place in the silver where a gem's likely been shorn off.

"Mine too."

The scents of jasmine and the ocean accompany the echoes of bare footsteps against stone sprinting farther away into the distance.

Plink.

Ploink.

Sometimes Hanan focused on the dripping–it was maddening, but it was something, and otherwise it was quite easy to imagine one was suspended in a void. Nothing but your own thoughts. No day or night. No clock. No time at all. But there was dripping.

And then there was Her.

Of all the people Hanan wasn’t supposed to be thinking about, she didn’t think about Ace the most. She was always not thinking about her. She was always forcefully kicking Ace out of her head and keeping a vigilant watch for any thoughts of her, no matter how comforting, because mindflayers. Hanan didn’t quite know how mindflayers worked, but she knew she didn’t want them taking those memories from her. Using them. Better not to remember them. Reminders not to remember were better than–

“Ace?” F–k. Immediately? Couldn’t hold out a moment? There’s a reason Hanan wasn’t given intel gigs. “I was going to come home after I beat this. You aren’t supposed to be here, it’s–” But Ace was talking, and it was never easy to stop her, even in this form. And gods help it Hanan couldn’t do a damn thing but listen. Listen while that voice echoed half the ugly thoughts that had haunted her since she’d sailed away from Rynvale for the last time.

Hanan flinched when she heard the glass shatter, and only then realized she’d fallen to her hands and knees. Hand. “Wait–!” She pushed to her feet, aiming to grab Lita’s hand, keep her from leaving. Only Hanan didn’t have feet, did she? She went to put her weight on a leg that wasn’t there and crashed to the cage floor. The metallic THUNK echoed off the walls while the scent and the noise and Her disappeared.

Mine too.

That might’ve cracked her. Or that and the dark and the silence and the drip drip dripping combined with it. Ace was alive. She had to be. That thought had kept Hanan going for years. Ace hated her, surely, would throw a bottle or knife at her if she ever saw her again, that was over, but she was alive. Right? Something must have dripped on her face. Damn cavern.

Vampirism made emotions stronger, at least for Hanan. Her joys were high, her sorrows deep. But she didn’t drown in them. She picked something far more healthy: rage.

“You lyin’ bitch. You’re not dead.” Hanan spat the words out around lengthening fangs. Rage. She scrambled around in the dark and found it–her peg. They’d left it with her, along with the crutch. She didn’t know why. Maybe it wasn’t threatening to them? Maybe they thought whatever little wormy baby took her body would need it? She had no idea. She rolled onto her butt, shoved her stump in the socket, and started strapping the peg leg’s bindings around her thigh. “You’re alive. If anyone lives, it’s you. Probably running your own crew. Ruttin’ mayor or something.” Ace in politics was an utterly ridiculous idea, but she had momentum. “Alive. And I don’t give a shyte if you’re a monster.”

She rose unsteadily, mostly on her right leg, then testing her weight on the left. She winced. “I don’t give a shyte who you kill. I’ll help burn the corpses.” She limped to one end of the cage, the chain holding it up creaking with the shift in weight. She turned and faced the other side.

A monster wouldn’t be in a cage like this. A monster wouldn’t have had the black spot put on her in the first place. A monster would have slaughtered anyone threatening her and her own. A monster would know that those other sad fools trapped in other cages, the scrabbling she heard in the dark sometimes, those were food. A resource. A monster would realize she’s a rutting vampire and can break out of this. Her sire was a monster. He’d been a killer. She had it in her. She just had to grab it and pull it out.

Was she growling?

“If you’re dead I’m going to butcher the entire ruttin’ island, you hear me?”

With all the strength she had, Hanan ran–janky but hard–against the opposite cage bars. She felt something shift in her shoulder blade. She didn’t care.

She did it again.

Plink

Ploink

THUD

Plink

Ploink

THUD