RP:Wrath Recognizes Wroth
Summary: Elhaym, an impressionable girl with murder on her mind, seeks a future that can fulfill her dark ambitions. That future comes in the form of a certain woman, Quintessa, who sees traces of her own past made manifest in this girl. Unwilling to leave a good tool unsharpened, Quintessa invites Elhaym to study under her. Surely, it's the start of a mutually beneficial tutelage — or a quick end to an unskilled girl, should matters tilt sideways in the weeks to come.
Towering Tenements, Larket
The autumn wind tasted much better at night, Elhaym decided. Before sundown, the thin woman became startlingly self-conscious of the way the wind ruffled her hair. What did she care about what other people saw? Why should she? Truth be told, she had no answer for it. After all, some of these people might turn up dead by daylight, if Elhaym happened upon any of them now. They had offended the girl, if only because she could sense their disdain toward her tattered green dress. 'I'll show them my shears,' she had thought to herself at the time. 'Then, their dresses can match mine.' Though their color would be crimson, of course. But it's the thought that counts.
Regardless, night. The wind was wonderful. Whatever it did to Elhaym's hair, it invigorated her besides. The scent of bread wafted in from the east, on the third floor of the towering nearby tenements. She didn't know what to make of it. Hunger stabbed at her stomach, too slender by half; but there was no urge, no mental or emotional impetus, to steal a loaf and feast. Elhaym cared little for her abdomen's outcry. She survived on scraps, now, and there were plenty of crumbs left back at her hideout beneath a nearby church.
The hunger in her fierce eyes was not for bread, but blood. Concealed within midnight's shadow, savoring the wind, and wondering when someone might pass nearby - someone to slay, maybe, and someone to surely steal from - Elhaym crouched in waiting behind a wealth of bushes.
Quintessa liked the autumn, she always had. It had always been a harbinger of ill tidings, of bitter endings and terrible beginnings, but it didn’t matter to her, she liked it anyway. The scent of natural decay in the air. The chill that brings the death of winter. Despite the cold, Quintessa found herself strolling the streets alone, a cloak shielding her identity but the scent of her clove cigarettes giving it away.
The fur-lined cloak she wore clung to her body as the smoke from her cigarette drifted away from her, Quintessa’s single blue eye- the hazel one hidden by an eyepatch, carefully scanned the shadowed streets as dusk began to swiftly fall upon Larket proper. It didn’t bother the hag-born, however, her gift for seeing in the pitch darkness never failed her. Today, however, she would fail to see the potential threat hidden in the bushes despite her ability to see in the dark.
Even wearing a cloak to conceal her identity, Quintessa might not prove the best mark to hit for a robbery. She was tall, standing six foot in her heeled military style boots, and though no weapon was visible on her person, the light of the setting sun would catch the glint of vials and bobbles the warlock carried for spellcasting purposes on her belt when she fiddled with them subconsciously as she walked. The aura of magic surrounding Quintessa, should Elhaym be able to sense it, was undeniably one belonging to a Magister of the Mage’s Guild as well. There was nothing the changeling could do to conceal it at this point, especially given her proximity to the girl. She was literally within arm’s reach as Quintessa gently caress the leaves of the bushes with her slender fingers as she passed.
The scent of bread quickly surrendered to something almost sickly sweet. No, perhaps sweet wasn't the proper word for it. Sharp, for certain, and spicy. A spicy sweetness, then, with a hint of wood. Cloves. The thin woman remembered the Dancing Destrier, where she had spent her adolescence as a wench. Father was the owner, after all, and it was to be expected. The memory, as pungent as the cloves the Destrier's patrons sometimes smoked, stung with its suddenness and left Elhaym numb. She didn't like to think about that place. To her, it was a lifetime ago. Nothing of that dainty little weakling that she had been remained within her now.
Cloves. How upsetting. To be reminded of that wretched thing, that pretty girl of the past, who smiled through inappropriate comments, bowed to the rudest patrons in complete servitude, and whimpered beneath her bedsheets every night. Well, that creature was gone, but these cloves smelled so good. They belonged, Elhaym quickly saw, to a tall, cloaked woman carrying an alarming number of aetherical utensils. 'Wait,' Elhaym thought, suppressing a gasp. It wasn't just cloves that drew her brain to Xalious unwillingly. It was this mass of magic swelling up around this passerby, this vortex of mystic strength that the magisters of the Mage's Guild carried with them as easily as their robes. Who was this woman? Elhaym wanted desperately to pounce, to demand... something. But what? Blood was out of the question; this person was powerful. The pangs of hunger became jealousy. She wanted that power.
And so Elhaym did what she had never done before — rather than acting the assailant, a predator who espied prey and pounced, instead she casually withdrew from behind the shrubbery and attempted to walk alongside the stranger. Distance would be kept; she wasn't coming within three meters of the clove-scented magic-wielder. But the act was unmistakable. She said nothing, but a fierceness now clouded her green eyes.
Quintessa was long accustomed to having to take notice when she was being trailed; She grew up in Vailkrin after all, with vampires and lycans constantly stalking her. It was a habit built upon necessity, so when Elhaym crossed the threshold from watching to following the hairs on the back of the changeling’s neck stood up to alert her, the soft sounds of someone else’s footsteps confirming this. She played it cool, however, taking one last drag from her cigarette before dropping it to the ground to crush under the heel of her boot. She stopped for a moment, pivoting on the snuffed clove cigarette butt beneath her as she casually turned to face Elhaym. The breeze picked up at this juncture. The cloaked woman’s hood caught on the wind and it dropped from her head almost too perfect for this moment, revealing who exactly this person was.
Messy raven hair framed her face like a picture, like the wanted posters that were plastered on every wall in Cenril. Her lone blue eye stared over at the girl in practiced indifference, a raised eyebrow the only thing betraying her curiosity. What was obvious however, was that she was the ‘assassin woman’ from the newspapers. This was Quintessa Blackwell. Countess Quintessa Blackwell. Magister Quintessa Blackwell. Quintessa the Betrayer. Those who grew close to her always were made to suffer for it, but had Quintessa ever met Elhaym before? In the thousands of times she had been to the Dancing Destrier she must have at least seen her, but this would be the first time she ever spoke to her.
“Yo,” The very first thing she uttered was somehow in fitting juxtaposition to the seriousness in the air, and if Quintessa didn’t recognize Elhaym she at least recognized that ferociousness in her eyes. The hunger. She tossed her cloak over her right shoulder before she continued, making a point to show off her alchemy belt clearly as she placed a hand on her hip. “Can I help you with something?”
This wasn't merely surprising to Elhaym because she recognized the woman, Quinetssa Blackwell, from those wanted posters. Elhaym had seen the illustrations of known criminals dozens of times, though at least in Quintessa's case, the inciting incidents sounded interesting. What struck her instead was that this was the self-same so-called criminal whose countenance Elhaym had expressly defaced on many posters in several prominent settlements. The Blackwell woman's most pronounced features were edited severely, or else etched out entirely; in their place were the soft angles and unmistakable details of Elhaym herself. She had found someone who, although notably different in appearance, remained similar enough to her own countenance to transform their illustrations into traps of Elhaym's own devising. 'Come find me instead,' the pictures had all but said aloud, and it was possible that Quintessa herself may have seen these odd alterations at some point over the past few months.
Despite the shock, Elhaym quickly regained her composure. "I... was hoping to kill someone." After a brief pause following her first word, the rest flowed as casually as if Elhaym had been borrowing a neighbor's sugar. Never before had she blurted it out so haphazardly; in the past, proclamations were made playfully, devilishly, all the better to terrify prey. Here, the thin woman seemed awkwardly amateurish, if not downright bizarre. She sighed. "But it won't be you. I doubt I'd pull it off, and for some irritatingly vague reason, I feel compelled to avoid my own death." Elhaym smirked. "So, instead I'll ask you a question." Despite her small size and awful garb, she stood upright, tugged her auburn hair, and narrowed her green eyes, as if to silently say, 'I am not one to be trifled with.' Whether it would work on someone so talented as Quintessa was another matter entirely.
"May I have a cigarette." Deadpan.
Quintessa’s cigarette hung lazily from her mouth as Elhaym explained, the smoke dangling gently around her like a translucent curtain. She couldn’t help but also recognize a quality in herself seen in this girl. After all, it wasn’t so long ago Quintessa was in her place, an urchin stealing to survive and killing because it sounded fun and interesting. When Elhaym admitted to sharing this same craving for blood, the changeling smiled, softly and genuinely. “I suppose you’d have to wait in line if you wanted to kill me,” she said with a chuckle, raising her hand from her hip to reach inside of her cloak for something. “Besides, only one person is allowed to do that and she’s taking a nap right now.”
Drawing a silver cigarette case, Quintessa flipped it open to reveal a neat row of black cigarettes, clove-scented roll-ups of tobacco mixed with other such herbs, and she held it out for Elhaym to take one. Quintessa stands her ground however, almost as if challenging the younger woman to approach her. “Come on then, little coral snake,” She shook a cigarette loose and it slid out further than the rest, just to tempt Elhaym to take it. “But you’ll have to keep me company for a little while in exchange.”
Elhaym could feel the lump in her throat dissipate as she listened to this woman’s words. She had been certain some form of conflict would arise. Wasn’t that the way of things? ‘Waiting in line?’ ‘Only one person?’ What peculiar things to say. It wasn’t so much that she had been put at ease, but rather, the girl felt a distant kinship, a glimmer in a sky full of stars, saying ‘this one’s not like the others; walk with her, talk with her.’ It was a foreign sensation, and her first impulse would have been to resist, to draw a shiv and not think twice. But there it was. The Cigarette That Was Promised. All Elhaym had to do was play the role, the coral snake, to slither up and fetch. Or maybe she’d die trying. Maybe the woman before her had some master plan. There was only one way to find out.
In gingerly fashion, Elhaym inched closer, raising her left hand on a level with the risen cigarette. And she reached to snatch it, like a snake might pounce a mouse. “Your terms are adequate,” she said, puffing herself up like she was something more than a girl in rags on the street past dusk. A subtle sparkle of heat emanated from her fingertip, lighting the cig, which she drifted to her lips and savored.
Quintessa had a plan, just not the violent one that Elhaym would have expected. The redhead takes the cigarette and lights it with a cantrip, and a small smile of satisfaction spreads across her face. “So, you’re a mage.” That was part of the test, to see what talents might be hidden under the surface. The changeling’s blue eye flickers to gaze in the direction of the Academy of Magics, lingering there for a long moment. “But not a student over there, I’d suspect, if you were born Larketian they would have burned you as a witch by now. Were you one of many displaced by the Ossian Order?” Quintessa’s gaze returns to Elhaym, curiosity in her stare. “Are you from the Mage’s Tower?”
Elhaym snorted mid-inhale, which blew more of the cigarette’s essence through her system, prompting an almost comically poor attempt at a muffled cough. “Hmph. I was born within sight of that accursed Academy. They all told me how wonderful it was that I had the ‘gift’, and my life would soon change for it.” Taking a drag and running her dirty right hand through her hair to push it wayward of her face, the girl fixed Quintessa with a telling grin. “They were right on that score, at least. The self-same day I was to begin my training, I was kidnapped alongside several students.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember who they were, so I couldn’t tell you if they were those Ossian what’s-its. But they had captured the Academy’s leader, I guess, or killed him, or whatever. Some bright-eyed adventurer sorts came to the rescue, but walked straight past me, leaving me to die. I suspect they took one look at me and figured I was halfway to hell already.” In as edgy a tone as she could muster, Elhaym continued: “They were right.”
All of this might have sounded a bit farfetched, perhaps, but the pieces were there — it was clear, however, that Elhaym herself wasn’t fully aware of what had taken place. Indeed, the Ossian Order had intervened, grabbing her as if she was already a member of the Mage’s Guild. She wasn’t. And while it would be fairly unlikely for someone to willfully leave the girl to her fate, Elhaym had forgotten she had hidden herself beneath the corpse of a less-fortunate apprentice. In all likelihood, the so-called saviors of that operation didn’t even see her. “Anyway,” all-too-casually, “some of my captors survived the ordeal. I roasted them, and their fat trickled out like a duck’s. Don’t worry,” she snickered. “I didn’t eat them. I think…”
Quintessa finishes off her cigarette as Elhaym recalls the events that lead her here, remaining silent the entire time and not revealing what exactly she knew about the Ossian Order. Unfortunately for her it was a lot, she had been one of the Mage Guild members the order tried to recruit. Quintessa herself was involved with kidnapping Larketian children at one point as well. By the time Elhaym speaks of roasting the Ossian lackeys until they were akin to roast ducks, she smirks, crushing her cigarette under the heel of her runic boots. “I wouldn’t judge you if you did- either way the Ossian Order is dead; We killed them. Ran them from our tower. So if you have ideas of revenge left for them I’d focus on something else. There is nothing left for you to target in that regard.” Quintessa looks westward, in the opposite direction of the castle, where things were quieter and less populated. “Come,” she says before strolling in that direction, her hands back under her cloak. “Let’s talk more about your education… You never actually received training then? What about a tutor growing up?”
Elhaym hadn’t known what to expect from this encounter, but confirmation that her assailants were dead and dusted wouldn’t have been on any list even if she had. “I’ll settle for the lovely mental imagery of their anguished screams, then.” Before she consciously realized it, the girl was dutifully following. There was a power to this stranger unlike that of the wretches Elhaym had grown accustomed to dealing with. Something about Quintessa made her obey. Was it a spell? Doubtful. No, there was something more primal at play. She carried herself like she mattered, and not in the fashion of those Larketian nobles. This was no facade. “Why would I need training? My flames bring pain to my enemies.” Elhaym’s ‘enemies’ were common thugs and trite denizens, but the word made her feel more confident in this little tantrum of hers. “If I know how to burn someone, what difference does it make whether someone instructed me how to do so?” It was obvious, despite her ignoring the second question, that the girl did not, in fact, have a tutor at any point in her upbringing.
Quintessa raises a brow at Elhaym, a frown tugging the corners of her mouth. “Do you think I got as powerful as I am without training? I studied under some of the best- Kasyr Azakhaer and Khitti Herzegler most notably, and they still have things to teach me yet. No, I am powerful simply because I refused to stop learning. The Mage Guild elders always told me to slow down- that I was delving into things I should not. Bah! To Perdere with them all. A flame may burn, yes, but it can never reach its full potential without intervention. You must craft your mind into a kiln to empower what talents you already have.” The changeling sighs. She did not mean to break into a lecture and doing so reminds her of the elders she was just cursing before. She changes her tone, trying to relate to the younger woman instead of sounding like she was trying to scold her.
“I was self taught for a long time too, until my seventeenth name day. I used the powers gifted to me from my Night Hag mother and murdered my abusive father to escape him, and I thought I was dangerous, that I could kill anyone I wanted. The innocent families I slaughtered during the Razurath Genocide fell victim to that desire. But there were always other threats out there, and Gevurah was mine. The Matron of Death could trump the powers of a lowly hexblade- so my powers had to be tempered. My flame needed to burn brighter. Kasyr and Khitti would not teach me how to destroy her so I had to find my own way without them. But that path…” Quintessa pauses, she did not want to bring up Caluss at a time like this. “I want to offer you a way to stoke that fire inside yourself without having to make the mistakes I did. You… remind me of myself. Maybe…” Maybe Quintessa could learn how to temper her own bloodlust by experimenting with Elhaym’s own, she just needed to convince her to trust her a little more. Already the redhead was dangerously close to being trapped in the Spider of Vailkrin’s web. “What is your name, Coral Snake? What do you want me to call you?”
Elhaym had heard distant tell of these Azakhaer and Herzegler people when she served as an adolescent barmaid in Xalious. A strange sensation passed over her as the girl recalled how innocently curious she had been to learn all about the adventures of alleged heroines and heroes. The sensation irritated her. What a naive fool she'd been; there were no heroines, only survivors. It seemed to she that Azakhaer and Herzegler were survivors, then, if they had taught Quintessa enough to help this truly spectacular woman to grow so powerful. Elhaym scoffed loudly at the Mage Guild elders' insistence that Quintessa slow down her learnings. That sounded just like them. Patience was only a virtue to those who had the leg-up to say so in life. The girl did begin to zone out ever so slightly as the changeling carried on - until the matter of being self-taught arose. The more Quintessa spoke of her deadly escapades, the more Elhaym's grimace twisted into an almost playful sneer. She slew an abusive father? She took part in - what? A -genocide-? A dark rivalry formed against the very Matron of Death herself? It almost sounded too good to be true.
The grimace returned. A girl whose feelings were so blatantly telegraphed upon her countenance would no doubt read like an open book to Quintessa Blackwell, and right now, 'Coral Snake' looked like she was tempted to bite into the sweetest apple called knowledge, but worried it was poisoned. The most interesting individual she had yet met was smoking a clove in front of her, and she even seemed willing to - perhaps - impart some sliver of her power. What was the catch? "You can call me Coral Snake for all I care, though I was once known as Elhaym. I suppose, thinking further, I still identify with that lamb-like name, if only bitterly. But that bitterness fuels me," the sneer emerged, "so let them all think me tender as a lass."
Quintessa could only examine the young woman coolly as she tossed back the nickname ‘Coral Snake’ though internally the warlock was amused. She finally allows that bemusement to show in a half-hearted smirk as the girl finally reveals her name to be “Elhaym,” Quintessa repeats the name to test how it feels on her lips. “It’s almost too elegant, huh? Like Quintessa- that name should have belonged to a princess but instead it belongs to me… Elhaym… El sounds better but I’m still not sure it suits you…” A new cigarette already replaces the old one, a flicker of magic and flame joining them for but a second before leaving them to their dark conversation. “Well, Coral Snake, are you interested in learning magic from me? It would have to be strictly off the record. I’m currently not permitted to teach in a professional capacity but what the guild leaders never learn won’t hurt them. I can make you into a powerful Evoker.”
Elhaym had to stop herself from giggling at the off-the-record part, for fear of seeming ‘princess-like’, after all. She could do nothing to conceal the glimmer of sinister hope in her eyes, though, curtailing every conscious effort of hers to appear steadfast and cunning. “You needn’t ask.” Every fiber of Elhaym was committed now. If this was, in fact, a poison apple, then let her drown in it; after all, what was the old adage? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? “I am yours,” the words parted from the girl’s lips almost on their own. “Mold me into this ‘Evoker’, and I will -not- falter.” The reality, of course, was that Elhaym had no way of knowing what was being asked of her. For all she knew, a teacher like Quintessa Blackwell slew more students than she graduated. “I require only bread, water…” She paused, awkwardly biting her lip. “And perhaps a bath.”
Quintessa seems pleased, the way her lips curl into a satisfied smile proves it. “Then you will come stay with the House Dragana refugees in my citadel. You may come and go as much as the blockades will allow- it is a time of war, after all, but you will have this to show the guards at my gate.” Quintessa holds out a small medallion in the palm of her left hand, the crest of House Blackwell, a skull and rose surrounded by thorny vines and snake eating its own tail, was minted on the surface. “With this they will allow you to enter and join us in our black spiral dance. Your needs will be met well beyond bread and water, that I can assure you.” And just like that Quintessa was unknowingly keeping up the old House Dragana tradition of taking in strays, just as Larewen had done for Quintessa years ago.