Getting to know you

[Amber Eyes]

It was much like the first day of school. Kyla Orlouge took yet another glance at herself in the mirror, sucking in the place on her stomach where she could almost pinch an inch and gave a satisfied smile. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her new skirt and matching blazer reminded her of a librarian she had once seen in Alerar. She knelt down to brush a scuff mark from her black high heel and then left the room with her leather satchel in hand.

The mystic clicked her way down the halls, taking special care not to fall down the steps today. The last thing she needed was to show up for her first day on the new job looking as though she just rolled out of bed. She had planned the day down to the last detail in the last few months, since Sei had announced her new position. Kyla was quite used to working with trained investigators, even though she herself had no talent for the craft. Now she would be leading a team of criminals and other less desirables, both categories she fit in much better than investigator.

They had been granted a large conference room not far from the cells. Most of the team were free to come and go as they pleased, but there were a few who had agreed to help in exchange for time off their sentence. Kyla entered the room and the enchanted candles sprung to life. She rounded the large conference table, brushing her fingertips on the freshly sanded wood top. She found her seat at the head and sat down gingerly with a smile. Soon her team would arrive. Some she had chosen herself, for others it would be their first meeting. Hopefully everything would go according to the plan.

[Slayer of the Rot]

"You could have just let Sei come down here in that goofy fucking skirt and spit in my face himself." The words came out of the door the second she turned and sat down. Like a great beast looming in the shadows of Concordia's trees, Dan stood in the frame, leaning against it, a small sliver of his sharp peeking between a scowl. The Red Beast looked like death, and not in a robe clutching a scythe. He was paler than usual, dark bags hanging beneath his miscolored eyes, standing out all the darker against his skin, gleaming lightly under the lamps with a sheen of cold sweat. Gruesome looking veins, discolored a yellowish black, reached out underneath the collar of his white shirt, like fingers questing for his neck. His black hair hung thickly in unwashed curls around his collar-bone, all tangled and knotted. Somehow he looked thinner too, but only a fool would take that as a sign of weakness and strike.

"It has been..." Dan stepped inside of the room, and looked worse in the direct light. He dropped something,and it gave a little clink when it hit the floor; a small, empty glass bottle of morphine. A tiny thing really, but the dose combined was enough to kill a healthy man. The tiny red mark on his jugular hinted towards what he'd used it for. "Almost a fucking year. A year." Dan had went for Sei, Jensen, and Talen at Hromagh's ten months ago, to this day, and when the battle had finished, leaving him still hungry, he found himself in this very castle, brokering his bloody hands in exchange for his daughter, safe with him ago. Some nights, he thought about what he'd do if they found his Meredith dead, and those nights, the roots of the castle shivered just slightly with the ghost of his sick anger.

He knew what he'd do. He'd kill them all and make them watch. He'd tear some apart, limb by limb. The others, he'd eat alive. They thought they knew him, he'd heard the little tales himself. But if he had to bury his own daughter, he would unleash every fiber of the maddening wrath that had been breeded into him on them all, rip the castle to the ground, explode in gibbering, insane ultra-violence.

But then he slipped the needle back in and put his head back on the pillow. He could trust Sei. Right? Sei had never stabbed anyone in the back playing general. Right?

There was a tiny tremor in his hand when he reached into his vest and retrieved a long, silver pipe, and lit it with a small, broken match. The air filled with the sweet smell of burning opium, and though he took a long, heady hit, he could still feel the steady, dull throbbing ache throughout his entire body. Dan sat down with abandon, dropping heavily in the chair across from Kyla. He stared at her, one eye as blue and sharp as her uncle's, the other as warm and merciful as a granite statue. He parted his thin lips, and purple-gray smoke rolled slowly out of his mouth. "Almost a year." It was almost a whisper. There was a weary anger in the tone. "Let me guess; now you need me. Why the hell should I do anything for you people? You haven't done anything for me. Would you do something for someone, if your boy was missing out there in the world and someone promised to help you find him, if you helped them? And they did nothing?" He was unloading on the woman; a long time of pent up grief. He talked to no one about it, but the high he was riding had loosened his tongue. He cared, and he didn't. Kyla didn't make the promise, but she was part of it. He took another drag from his pipe, then poked it at her, raising his eyebrows in question.

"Would you want to help this person?"

[Amber Eyes]

As soon as he entered Kyla knew that the plan was gone. The look in the slayer's eyes was enough to keep her glued to her seat with her mouth shut. The mystic had no questions about what Dan Wilmhearst was capable of. She'd seen it first hand. She held her tongue and listened intently to his words, breathing slowly to keep her composure.

Kyla stood as Dan concluded his speech, dropping himself into a chair as permission for her to speak. He was obviously not in his right mind, running on drugs and rage. The mystic thought hard about her next words, walking toward the stone wall behind her, keeping her eyes far from his.

"I've never been in your shoes Dan. I can't pretend to know the answers. I lost Akiv once, and I had to do things to get him back. Things I'm not proud of. He was gone for three days. The hardest three days of my existence. I was a shell of myself, broken."

Kyla turned with tears in her eyes, staring at Dan with concern. "I cannot fathom what you've been through, but I will make a promise to you now. If Sei can locate her I will follow you as far as it takes to help you bring her home." She turned again, wiping the tears and regaining her composure, continuing with her voice now under control. "We all have different gifts, and I am of little help in locating Meredith. I do however, trust Sei with all that I am. I am certain he has not gone back on his word. If you don't want to help me I won't hold it against you, but I desperately need your help."

She paused, hoping the man was considering her words. "To answer your question honestly, I wouldn't stop pushing for action until my boy was home. If that meant gathering supplies, I would do it. If it meant working with a band of crazies for a few weeks, I'd do it. If it meant tearing Sei a new asshole like you just did me," she smiled. "I'd do it."

[Roht Mirage]

You have a way with people, Sei had said -rather, sent- when he assigned her to this task.

I'm out of my league, Astarelle now thought, hours too late for the realization to do any good. She leaned against the wall. Her feet twitched as if afraid of the final step that would take her into the room where parenthood-scarred hearts were laid bare. Some might joke that she was a parent as well, for she had taken a band of street urchins under her wing and was determined to give the “ferals” a proper chance at life. The safety of the castle. The promise of an education. The hope that they might limit their locust-like pickpocketing to once a month. For that chance, and for a place to lay her head before something inevitable and calamitous stole her away again, she would play by Sei's rules, complete his tasks, and polish the public face of Ixian with a big, false celebrity smile.

But, how far would she go for the children? All that held her, personally, to the castle was convenience and the glimmers of a few -dare she jinx it- proper friendships. Without her, though, the ferals would have no one to shoulder the weight of their crimes, no one to beg their forgiveness. They just didn't understand... not how much she pushed, nor how graciously Sei relented when he could. Still, how far for them, when she wasn't their mother. They still didn't even allow her to give them individual names.

Sighing, feeling small, she tilted around the door frame and stepped in. “I would help as well,” she offered meekly. She knew exactly how little it might mean, having never met Dan Wilmhearst. Oh, but she had heard of him. Dan-blasted-Wilmhearst! Her eyes danced over his, finding one of them as gray as her own, but so much colder.

She folded her arms across the front of her long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, pearl white against her desert-kissed skin. The shape of her legs, in tight black fabric, was indistinct as shadows pushed against the imperfect lamplight, but she moved with a grace that implied a dancer's physique. “None of us are in this room by choice. Honest choice,” she said as she tentatively approached the table. The foreign mark of divinity on her forehead shimmered just slightly, accenting the subtle, resigned quirk of her brows. “We're bound by debt.” She gave a small nod of admission, then a long, sympathetic look for Kyla. “Or duty.” Looking back at the fabled slayer, she found her tongue frozen.

The people of Fallien knew about respect, for both creature and man. It was determined by -foremost- the danger that they presented. By that rule, she was remiss for not prostrating herself on the floor. But, that was not the dynamic that Sei wanted to foster. Bury her if she had any affect on the already chilly atmosphere, though. That he had such confidence in her was a compliment indeed, but also entirely delusional.

“I won't guess what binds you here,” she finally said to the man who -seated, sickly- felt so much taller than her. “If half the stories are true about you, that might be a long tale in itself.” She gave a small smile with just a hint of dry amusement.

“Oh,” she said in a higher tone, “I'm being rude. Astarelle Set'Roh.” She indicated herself with a salute that she hadn't used since leaving her home city. She uncrossed her arms from under her breasts, brushed the right one gracefully up the left side of her chest -gathering a whisper of the heart- and gestured to Dan Wilmhearst with palm up as if offering a small piece of herself. “Our pasts are faded. Our futures unknown. Now, in this place, allies,” she said, invoking another memory of her homeland. She would not have done so for just anyone. But, when one meets a night terror made flesh, it is wisest to move as the wind wills.

Astarelle will wait for Kyla to return to the table before taking a seat. She'll sit next to her. Bunny if appropriate. (And I'll be editing out notes like this when they're obsolete. A clean thread is a happy thread.)