It took Luned's tired brain an embarrassing length of time to dissect Aurelianus' bizarre slang, distracted as she helped barely-conscious Flint into his 'new' jacket. It was a struggle with that awful shoulder of his, the work of getting his bad arm into a sleeve eliciting no small number of groans and curses from the poor, disgruntled man. "Ah, well…" she began, quickly piecing together a bare minimum of details that would satisfy his curiosity. "I was an intended buyer, but someone made off with the entire shipment into the sewers. We've been investigating, but obviously it's not there."
The serpentine fellow wasn't feeling especially patient. "Yeah, I tumbled to that, luv. I wanna know where it is."
The battered scribe attempted to arrange her clothing in a functional fashion, finding this new outfit was nearly the right size, but everything ran quite long. She knelt down and rolled up her pant legs, doing her best to ignore the irritation of the fact that even if she had a change of clothes, her hair was still soaked in sewage water and nothing would fix that except a bath that was out of her foreseeable future. At the very least, her leg had stopped bleeding and the feeling was mostly restored. "It's not for certain, but I think we've figured it out," she sighed. "So I suppose it's time to go deal with that."
Flint, beyond any desire for polite conversation as he continued to shake off those fever dreams, merely nodded. He knew. They both knew.
"Fine by me. So, who we gonna kill?" Aurelianus asked calmly, spitting out his hair and taking another drag off his cigarette.
This proposition apparently horrified Luned, earning an agape glare, but after a moment of consideration, she realized that maybe it's what Ezura deserved. She poisoned her daughter, induced chaos in the sewers, caused at least several brutal homicides, stole from Swanra'ann, and caused Flint and herself a traumatizing amount of trouble. "No one's killing anyone," she replied bluntly, but from the slight change in her expression, Aurelianus was amused to find that she might not be so averse to laying down justice after all.
The walk to the museum felt like it took ages. Flint was really in no shape to confront a thief –– nor was Luned, for that matter –– but he simply didn't have the energy to argue. If anything, this was just one last stop before he finally left Ettermire or found permanent slumber in the gutters thanks to Swanra'ann. At this point, the only thing forcing his feet into constant, sluggish motion was Luned's gentle urging and repeated promises that she'd find them comfortable lodging and antibiotics. She could see he was struggling, but they were this close to leaving this nightmare behind them.
On the way, the Aurelianus caricature insisted on hearing an account of their Swaysong-spurred adventure to date. Luned reluctantly told the morbid tale, lingering on the goriest details to entertain him so she could glaze over ones she had trouble putting into words, namely the specifics surrounding Helethra. In the end she was glad to have organized their story out loud, as laying it all out there put perspective on the whole thing that both felt conclusive and shameful. It had been so obvious.
"I looked for signs when we first went to the museum," Luned attempted to justify her ignorance. "There were a lot of chemicals on those shelves, but nothing in a standard smoke bomb. But of course they weren't on display… she's obviously not stupid." She glanced over to Flint, as if hoping for some validation, that he could somehow say or do something that would soothe the burn of defeat.
He remained quiet, eyes straight ahead as he struggled to remain upright. Luned wondered if he'd even heard her, but after a long moment he muttered a response. "She was sick. Those things on her skin…"
The trio commenced the last leg of their trip in silence, but Flint's words got Luned thinking. Out of the three of them, she most understood what Swaysong was; Helethra's symptoms were complicated and typical of the more tragic turns that ingestion of such a powerful substance could take. The sewer creatures, they were under the influence of something else, but Helethra was a textbook case... well, as much as textbooks existed on this controversial substance, anyhow.
Swaysong, after all, was a monkey's paw. If one truly believed it was a cure-all, it could heal any disease known to man. If a confident person took it believing it would bring him to his full potential, it could very well turn man into demigod. A conflicted child, however, was a can of worms and the last thing that needed was magical enhancement.
The thing that killed Luned most about this, though, was the fact that in order for Helethra to become a monster, she must have felt like one to begin with.
By the time they arrived at the museum it was closed, Flint was dead on his feet, and glimpses of a pink and gold sunset peeked through the dark clouds. Luned hesitated at the rear entrance, looking up and wondering what the sky above Ettermire looked like before the industrial revolution. She wondered if there was anyone left who even remembered. She also recognized that she was stalling, afraid of what they were to discover within, so she forced herself to gather the last fragments of her courage and knocked on the door.
It creaked open, having been closed without care. Recalling Ezura's heavy lock-up the previous evening, it was an ominous sign.
The hallway appeared normal, but when they reached the lab, it was barely recognizable. It had been ransacked, furniture overturned and cabinets emptied onto the floor, pools of chemicals mixing dangerously on the floor. The odor was overpowering, formaldehyde combined with even more toxic substances, and Luned nearly fainted from vapors as she stepped in first. "Don't step in that," she gestured to the mess, "If you'd like to keep the soles on your feet. Ugh." She picked her way over shattered jars, their previous inhabitants swimming in solution on the floor, and walked over to the living area where Helethra's things were strewn carelessly amongst random pieces of lab equipment. Stooping, she picked up the doll of the rat king and reflexively stroked the hair on one of its many heads.
Flint stepped in next, and in his nigh-delirious state he missed Luned's warning. He crunched through some glass until he stepped on something soft that popped like an egg. Looking down, he lifted his boot.
The crushed skull of Bruno gazed back up at him, still smiling. One of his eyes had dislodged and burst like a grape full of jelly on the tile.
"Watch it, basher," Aurelianus piped up from behind as Flint wavered on his feet. The tiefling shoved him upright again and stepped around him to enter the room, not bothering to tip toe around the remains of the red-eyed elf fetus that squished audibly underfoot. He was too in the zone to pay heed to the strange creatures that littered the floor; he'd seen far worse in Hell. "I repeat m'self: who we gonna kill?"
Luned looked up from the doll, shook her head, and frowned. Beast Helethra didn't make this mess; people did. "Swanra'ann got her."
That was all it took for every ounce of Aurelianus' oh so angelic patience and grace to fly out the window. "Of all the pikin', soddin', Powers-damned, whorin' luck!" The interior décor was already adequately destroyed but he seemed to disapprove of the job, as he picked up a metal stool and began smashing the glass out of several empty cabinets. The harsh shattering made Luned wince and she looked over to see Flint leaning against the wall next to the door, wiping feverish sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. His eyes were unfocused. He was sick, and she'd brought him all this way for nothing. There wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel, after all.
"That pikin' chit gave us the laugh!" Their fiery acquaintance brought her out of her thoughts with a tremendous clatter as he threw the stool against the metal sink in the back of the lab, then kicked the table against a wall with a hard thud that dislodged one of its legs. Coils of smoke rose from his clenched fists and, for a moment, Luned thought he might turn on them, right after all that effort of patching them up. This wasn't far from the truth, as if the pair of them turned out useless in his pursuit of the mythical substance, the half-demon figured he might as well get some enjoyment after all the trouble he'd gone through.
It was time to rein in their emotions. "Wait," she called out, holding up her hand defensively. "If they came for Ezura, they must have taken any Swaysong she had left. I imagine they still want my money for it, so I'll go find them and offer to hold up the deal." Luned hadn't planned on sharing it with a stranger, but after his help, she had a feeling he would end up with some in his pocket whether she extended an invitation or not. In her precarious situation, she hadn't much choice in the matter.
Aurelianus sneered, skeptical.
Luned didn't want to give him time to consider things too carefully, such as the possibility of killing her, stealing the significant amount of money she had hidden on her person, and going to get it himself. She continued talking to stall, setting down the doll and commencing a search of all the storage spaces in the room. "Just give me five minutes. I have something I need to do, and Flint needs water, and if I'm not mistaken, Ezura may have some things around that could be helpful in a potential confrontation with the Queen of the Pit."
The room had seen a thorough shakedown but Luned hunted anyhow. Alas, no sign of affirmation was to be found in any obvious location in the room, and whoever had searched for the Swaysong destroyed everything else in their path.
Then the scribe remembered something Ezura said to Helethra on their way out the night before. "Upstairs… it must be upstairs. I'll be quick, I promise! Flint, you hang in there."
The first two doors Luned tried in the hallway were locked, the third opened into a similarly ransacked closet, and the fourth led into a narrow, wrought-iron spiral staircase. She took it.
The door at the first landing opened up into the reception area of the museum, empty and dark, and Luned thought even her quiet breathing might echo in the impressively large, open space. Dim light filtered in through grand street-facing windows three times her height, glass panes held in place by ornate iron frames. She truly wished she was there on a pleasant occasion to get a personalized tour from Ezura, she really had intended to explore this museum at some point, but no such luck, and it was unlikely she'd ever return. She closed the door and ascended again.
The second floor was also occupied by the museum, but the third and final level opened into a living space. It could have been a beautiful home, really, set up like a large, airy loft. Bare brick and rustic beams formed the structure, large windows allowing plenty of light, but that was where the coziness ended. It seemed no stone was left unturned and furniture was thrown around, decorations destroyed, books and keepsakes knocked from shelves to lay despondently on the floor in the overcast gray light.
Luned realized, then, that this was her own private viewing of the wreckage that was Helethra's and Ezura's life together. What Swanra'ann's men destroyed only reflected the grave reality of the situation, but the relationship between mother and daughter wasn't as easily repaired as a broken toy. Standing amongst the fragments of what should have been the happy youth of a bright little girl and knowing what misery laid ahead for them, Luned felt an entirely new and increasingly unsettling helplessness. How does one salvage the potential of an ideal, anyhow?
The darkening sky outside cast deep shadows in the room and, looking out at the street, Luned was reminded of the fact that she had places to go, things to do, and ill friends to help. Was Flint a friend? She wouldn't be surprised if that revelation was one-sided, but allowed it on her part all the same. If she went home and told Resolve this story, she'd listen, but never understand. In a selfish way, it was comforting to know that there was someone else in the world who'd share the same nightmares after they left this godforsaken place.
Fortunately, Luned's time upstairs was made mercifully brief by the fact that Swanra'ann's men apparently found what they were looking for, and the mess ended precisely at a spot in the kitchen where a piece of artwork was torn off the wall to reveal a safe embedded in the brick. It was open and empty, and to Luned's pleasant surprise, the room smelled oddly of sulfur.
On the area rug below scattered a handful of important documents, money, jewelry, all items commonplace in a family safe, but there was also a discarded cloth containing two vials, a third one broken nearby. Now that Luned was kneeling to collect these spoils she noticed specks of blood on the carpet, difficult to make out at first as they joined the woven design, but the oxidized brown that mingled with the geometric shapes was unmistakable. There'd been a struggle. The scribe imagined that, in one last ditch effort to escape the brutes, Ezura must have broken one of her leftover smoke bombs then faced the consequences when they easily overpowered her.
Luned wondered if she was still alive and, somewhere in the back of her subconscious, her Swaysong mission turned into the seed of an idea that maybe, just maybe, she could rescue Ezura both from Swanra'ann and her own ignorance of her child. This seed grew as she grabbed a mug and filled it with water from the pump; it grew as she dashed down the dizzying stairs; it grew as she reentered the lab to find Flint sunk down onto the floor and Aurelianus pacing wildly in her absence. Maybe their family had a future, and she had the power to give them that chance. Maybe there was a way to bring Helethra back. Maybe Luned's opportunity for redemption was in the future, not in rewriting the past.
"Drink," she insisted, forcing the cup into Flint's hand. There was a sheen of sweat on his ashen skin and, though he remained responsive and awake, Luned couldn't help but wonder how much longer that would last. There was an endless variety of diseases he could have picked up from that rat's mouth, and a raging bacterial infection was likely the friendliest amongst their many thrilling options.
From there, her attention turned to Aurelianus as she walked over to Helethra's toys to pick up a gas mask she remembered seeing mixed in with the dolls and books. "I found what I was looking for, and I'm pretty sure they got the Swaysong back. Just hold on, one more minute, please," she pleaded, then pulled the tightly wrapped package in waxed canvas out of her pocket. Even that hadn't kept the contents fully dry after her delightful swim with the leeches, but luckily she had enough foresight to hide the ticket inside the pages of her journal, and it remained crisp and dry. On it was a concerned message from Agnie.
Luned wrote back, her rushed handwriting painfully messier than her usual level of quality, but it'd have to do.What's going on? I thought you were returning tonight. Touch base.
The dependability of the fairy was questionable, but it was the best Luned could manage. She could only hope everything would fall into place as she packed up her things and replaced them into her pockets, keeping the fountain pen easily accessible in her breast pocket next to the smoke bombs. But... what would they do with Flint?Rendezvous ASAP, please watch door.
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