RP:Sunday Best
Summary: Langley gets a new (meat) suit.
Bridge Across the Void, Vailkrin
Yurielle Markan had seen the writing on the wall.She wasn't the only one either. Whilst some of her elders had scoffed at the news emerging around her- at the looming threat of war, and the volatility of the city- the memories were still fresh in her comparatively young mind. While some dismissed the the threat of a nascent god was real- She still remembered the sight of Vailkrins sky splitting apart- of days spent frantically hiding, as abominations of all shapes and sizes roamed the street. That massive eye,that had stared into their world, judging them insignificant.
A shiver ran through her, a sense of cold settling in that reminder her of mortality. This time, there was no clearcut protector to save them. This time, the houses were still bickering, or denying the obvious- Their shield was complicit, their spear . . . Word of what had happened at the castle was spreading, but it was still difficult to make sense of it. Had it been a play for the future of the crown? The abdicated King had returned- but, was his house even in order? There were far too many unknowns, and the world around them was rallying against them even as the situation worsened.
And so Yurielle Markan had set out the crows. With barely a glance back towards the house that had served as her partners in research for years beyond counting- she'd stolen into the darkness to pursue a rumour. A credible one,,she hoped. Though the thought had done little to mollify the sense of shame she felt in voicing her secret concern to the bird- and watched it fly off into vailkrins moonlight sky.
In truth, as she sat in the bridge which spanned Vailkrins abyssal gorge- all she felt was a profound sense of lonely emptiness- that had her pulling the hood of her cloak over her red hair.
Langley liked being a rumor. Rumors had power. They grew one's reputation so much grander than the subject of that rumor could hope to be. Rumors became legends and legends… people feared the legendary. So when the crows came, Langley heard what they had to say and spent perhaps longer than necessary debating on whether or not to show up. Sometimes, Langley did not bother. It helped to grow the rumor when some people doubted that he even existed. But ultimately, the deal broker decided to give this one a chance. There was something about it that was wholly interesting. This one has a certain value that Langley could not ignore.
So Langley arrived at that bridge, dressed to the teeth in his Sunday best. But finery aside, the man looked quite the fright. The glasses did very little to hide the sunken in eyes. The bright red of his coat only made the deathly complexion of his flesh more obvious. And there was simply no hiding the black festering splotches where rot had set in. Regardless, he did his best to gussy himself up. It simply would not do to make an appearance in public without at least taking the time to clad himself in finery, and a dash of good cologne to mask any unseemly smells.
"Terrible night for a curse, child." Langley said smoothly, his words twanging with each syllable. The darkness of night at least helped hide the terrible state that Langley was in. His eyes glowed an inhuman yellow in the moonlight and his broad smile glinted. Too many teeth and far too sharp. "My friends tell me you wanted to meet me? Well, here I am, child. What can ol' Langley do for you?"
The necromancer leaned against the railing but maintained a bit of distance, just enough to clad himself in a bit of shadows. The air of mystery always helped to keep him in control of the situation.
Yurielle was startled out of her bleak reveries when her rumour decides to substantiate itself- the mingled scent of decay and dandy providing a repugnant reality to the otherwise shadowy figure. They're details she can't help but catalogue- though she's not quite certain as to the why. Perhaps she hoped to settle her nerves by quantifying the figure- as though she might be able to reduce it to a curious collection of qualities. And yet, there's something elusive beneath the surface, something that sits uneasily within the shadows- and which coaxes the hint of goose pumps on pale flesh, coaxing her into an uneasy shiver. "I want out. Of this city. Out of whatever's coming next. And I want to be safe doing so." She likely wasn't the only one looking for a way out from whatever crossfire might emerge, but if she could, she wanted to stack the deck as much as possible. Especially since her departure would entail leaving with house secrets. "Safe from a world that's been reminded that it should fear and hate vampires, and from the house that might retaliate when I abandon it." She wants to look away from this glowing eyes, to flick her own crimson ways skyward- but she does her best to resist the urge, as though it might prove dangerous to succumb to distraction.
Langley || Something vile slithered it's way out from under Langley's coat, repugnant in the way that it writhed. Tentacles, some people were inclined to call them. But these… they felt wrong in all the wrong ways, like looking at a hole in reality where something should definitely exist or impossible architecture… or something that looked human but was just odd enough that it made the skin crawl. Those tendrils touched the ground and lifted Langley up so that his feet dangled freely below him and carried him towards the vampire as she spoke. The smile likely made it worse. No one who moved like that and looked like that should be smiling like a bell hop waiting to take one's coat. It was too pleasant.
"I think I catch ya drift, child." Langley chuckled as his extra limbs deposited him in front of the vampire. He leaned in and inhaled, as if breathing her in. Those yellow eyes never blinked. They never left hers. "Vampirism ain't the safety net it used ta be, eh? Not so fun when the hunter becomes the hunted?"
Langley clicked his tongue as a hand reached into his breast pocket and pulled from within a hand rolled cigarette that had been deposited there. It was placed between gaunt lips and a little spark of green fire brought it to light, mixing the smell of spice into the air with all the other aromas. "A trade then? Your immortality for my mortality. A fair deal, I think. You stop being all this," Langley gestured with a wave of the hand towards Yurielle's body. "And I'll bear that burden instead. I've always wanted to try my hand at bein' a vampire. Win-win, as they say."
Yurielle couldn't help the look of revulsion that creeps over her features- that instinctual dislike that rose up in her like bile, and had to be forced back down so she could make even a paltry effort at steeling herself. The act is hard, enough so that she isn't even fully aware that one of her feet have slid back as though to escape. And it makes her all the more grateful for the breath that was now lost to her, because the rancidness of his presence becomes all the harder to ignore. No amount of perfume was ever going to mask the scent of a walking morass. And now that they were closer, it was impossible to ignore the ruins of their mortall shell. The vessel for whatever roiling chaos lurked just beneath the surface of their flesh.
It's enough that she almost forgets herself, and yet- She was a Markan. Was it not her calling to observe things at the edge of perception. To experience what others dare not pursue. Even if that would change tonight, she intended on making good on that credo one last time. She presses her tongue against the back of her teeth, takes an inhale- and starts to extend her hand out in a gesture of acceptance. Only, she doesn't quite finish it. Instead her hand drifts back to one of the inner pockets of her cloak to pull out a small tin. One that she pops open to reveal carefully ground herbs, fragrant, yet unfamiliar, "A house strain. Extravagance is part of your reputation." Perhaps she shouldn't have been so honest, but deception had never been her finer point. She'd left it to her elders. To the ambitious schemers. Here and now, as she raises her hand up, she repeats Langleys offer, "My immortality, for your Mortality- and a chance at a life beyond this city." Anywhere, but here.
Langley || Rarely had a deal come to its conclusion so readily and so easily. Normally there were negotiations. Offers and counter offers, that little game of mental chess that had to be played. Each person desperate to believe that they got the better end of the bargain. And here it was, laid out so simply before Langley. The perfect deal. It was a little tragic that this providence could not have shone itself upon Langley for one of his bigger plays. But Langley did not get to where he was by frowning upon opportunity. So he grasped that hand, squeezed, and shook it.
And then Langley did not let go.
"No time for regrets, child." Langley said, a small hint of remorse in his voice. An unspoken apology. The agreement was struck though and there was no turning back.
The necromancer opened his mouth as wide as it would go. Then there was a pop and a crack and that jaw swung open far wider than it should have. And from within that gaping maw, there came a gurgling. It was like the sound of someone choking on their own blood. It was like the sounds of ooze bubbling slowly from a pipe. It was like the last rattling wheeze as someone gasped for their final breath. Then something black and slimy filled the man's mouth.
Fingers emerged from inside, uncurling. They were gaunt and skeletal, a slick necrotic skin stretched thinly across the bones of each digit. Then an arm followed behind, slithering limply like a snake. It dropped with a foul ichor, some thick residue that reeked of everything wrong with the world. Langley did not let go. In fact, he squeezed harder and his other hand grabbed the vampire by her wrist. The agreement was struck and there was no turning back.
That horrible hand shot forward and landed upon Yurielle's chest. Then it sank inward, as if absorbed into the vampire's chest like a sponge. Something inside her was grabbed ahold of and the arm began to withdraw. It would hurt. It would be the most painful thing that she had ever experienced. Langley knew this. Langley felt this once. And the memories of the pain each of his new bodies experienced when he did this lingered somewhere inside. The feeling of something being torn from the flesh that was never meant to be removed, the unbinding of an essence that was threaded intimately into every cell of a person's body. It was a truly horrific thing. Like being yanked inside out while being ripped apart and sewn back together only to be ripped apart again. The lingering bits of Langley's humanity tingled with something akin to guilt. But the agreement was struck and there was no turning back.
Slowly, the hand recoiled back into Langley's mouth, carrying with it something so small and yet so precious. It was swallowed up with the hand, disappearing back into whatever deep, dark pit existed inside the necromancer. Then tentacles poured out of Langley from beneath his clothes. They writhed and lashed forward, invading Yurielle's mouth, nose, and ears. They forced their way in, thrashing about wildly. They were much too large to fit into the orifices they invaded, and yet… they did.
And then, it was done.
Langley looked at her hands. They were smaller, daintier. This flesh was not as tall as she had previously been. But there was an elegance that Langley liked about this form. Slender, with porcelain skin and such fiery red hair. This body would serve her well.
"Enjoy your freedom, child." Langley said, her voice like a flute. "Mortality ain't all it cracks up to be, I can assure you of that. But…" She paused to let out a small preemptive laugh at her own inside joke, "no time for regrets."
Yurielle could not comprehend what she was seeing. For a brief moment, she was hiding under a desk again, a scared human being hunted by things she -could- not understand. Things so far beyond her reckoning that there was no recourse but to succumb, or become the very things she feared. And then she was back again- her senses alight with the indescrible feeling of her body rejecting her very existance. Of her being robbed from her body, and forcefully moored within the walking cadaver that had so easily offered her a way out.
She couldn't even stand- the male body she'd inherited so far gone, so hollowed out, that it was already collapsing to the ground, her words stifled on the flow of blood which poured out from her mouth- a repercussion of the roughshod manner in which the broker had exited its form and usurped hers. Her hands scrabble across the cobblestone of the bridge, trying to find purchase in the gory slickness- to avoid the distraction of the ruined features she'd inherited, to focus on a solution. To grasp hold of some angle that might bring a satisfactory conclusion to this ill-fated experiment. The broker had offered -his- mortality, for her immortality.
Her head swims, and her body sags, as a body not built to sustain life- one whose very blood was tainted, begins to allow itself to be reclaimed. "I want-" Breathing was hard. Speaking perhaps worse. "my chance" She wasn't even sure if she could pick out the moons reflection in the growing pool before her anymore, "at life." Yurielle wasn't even sure they could properly feel, anymore, "Please." It couldn't end like this, could it?
Langley felt around on this new body, patting it down for something. The previous occupant had been quite clear in the request. A chance. And Langley was nothing if not a stickler for wording. So a hand finally dipped into a pocket and emerges with a coin pinched between two fingers.
"Yes, child. I recall. You asked for a chance at life. And a chance you'll get. A flip of the coin. Fifty fifty is, after all, certainly a chance. Heads, I will help you. Tails… well, then I suppose that is that."
And the coin went flipping into the air and tumbling back down again, caught in one hand and placed on the back of the other. It was heads. The former vampire had some luck on her side, it would seem. Langley was disappointed in this result but a deal was a deal.
"Well, looks like someone is lookin' out for you after all." Langley cooed as she knelt down to gently cup the dying creature's cheek in her palm. Langley knew every bit what it felt like to be inside that flesh. It was agony. And Langley sympathized but that suffering… it was so utterly delicious that Langley wanted to pause in this moment forever and drink it all in. Alas, time was not one of the powers in Langley's repertoire. "Be strong, child. You gotta own that flesh. Hold tight to it. It'll hurt. You'll want it to end with every passing moment and I promise you, each moment's gonna be worse than the last. But if you want to live, you listen to ol' Langley and grit them teeth."
What a terrible fate but her desire for life was admirable, in a way. Langley recognized that drive. It spoke to a primal part of her.
"There are options. Death is certain. That's just a fact of life. But this body is most assuredly gonna die. I can keep it animated. It won't make the hurt go away. It won't stop the rot. But maybe I can find a willing body for you eventually." Langley explained before lifting her other arm into the air. A raven immediately came to roost upon the wrist of that arm. "Or, I can put you in one of my birds. That'll end the pain, for certain. And you'll have your freedom. What's freer than a bird, child?"
Yurielle || Options are a tantalizing thing- They can paralyze a mind, even when every instinct says to run, or hide. And right now, each one held a certain appeal. Letting go seemed like a mercy- Yet Langleys fingers on her cheek helped to remind her. There was a life beyond a city- one that could be open to her again if she just held on. Which is when the third chance presents itself. No agony, No drawn out misery, the only question was- the catch? "Make. Bird. Last." A pause, "Talk." She wanted to say so much more, to make sense of the ideas desperately trying to present themselves, but the thoughts couldn't form- dissolving almost as quickly as they'd arrived. Leaving her to outstretch a hand with the meager strength she had left.
Langley || The terms were struck and the deal defined. They were agreeable. That night, Langley would shake hands twice with the poor creature that she had traded places with. And in the morning, there would be naught but a corpse left behind on that bridge. Some half-rotted dessicated man laying in a pool of his own foul blood, empty in the most true and essential form of the word. No one would likely question it. Just another corpse in a city full of corpses to be dragged off and tossed in a pit for parts. Once upon a time, this knowledge bothered Langley but now it was just part of her nature and no more strange than changing one's socks. Ravens were smart creatures, already capable of limited speech. It was a simple request to indulge, just some magical massaging of the brain. Certainly the new mouth parts would take some getting used to. But the former occupant of this body Langley now lived in certainly seemed willful enough to figure that part out.