Begging Indulgence

[Slayer of the Rot]

A ribbon of smoke twisted up into the air, moving lazily like a snake caught in the cold above the heads of the beast and the whore. Golden candleabra, tall enough to touch a standing man's chin, glowed with curious blue fires in the small room, casting strange shadows on the face of the black haired man lounging upon the lone couch, who seemed more interested with the long stemmed pipe in his hand than with what the raven haired woman was doing in his lap. He had barely moved an inch since he'd woken in the very same room that morning. Or perhaps it had been the afternoon, or evening - it was impossible to tell. There were no windows in the opium den. The patrons of the drug house had little need for the real world when they could soak in their private, surreal dreams.

The man brought the pipe to his lips, and its bowl glowed a bright red, interrupting the blanketing, otherwordly calming blue light that the smokers enjoyed so much to languish in. That brief, aggressive surge of bloody color pulled aside the guise of tranquility that the dimness gave the man. In that moment, he looked impatient, aggravated - a beast who's potency had been stolen from him. Tipping his head back, he pulled his lips back from his teeth, revealing the monstrous, sharp teeth, just as sharp as a butcher's knife. Rings of shimmering smoke escaped his mouth, but no more than two had begun to rise above the couch before a slender, pale hand reached up, poking a finger playfully through the center of the last. Growling, the man looked down at the woman, who was smiling lazily at him, her eyes misty and musing.

Like the darting stinger of the scorpion, the man's hand shot out and smacked across the back of her head. She cursed, but held her tongue, pouting. "Did I tell you that I'm done? Does it look like it?" Running a hand through her hair, the color of a raven's feather, but glowing almost azure in the strange candle flames, sighed, and dipped her head back down. Sneering, the man turned his attention back to his pipe.

Before he could take another long, disorienting pull on it, the thickly embroidered curtains were pulled aside by a shaking hand. Slinking inside like a beaten dog, a man in an ankle length violet robe, dark sking, a long nose and angular facial features cringed before taking another step inside. He wrung his hands closely to the breast of his robe, the cold cobalt light glinting off the dozens of gold rings he adorned his fingers with. "You are satisfied, yes? Yes? Would luh-like some food? More to suh-smoke? A duh-different woman? Anything you wish for Da - " The man on the couch shifted his weight lazily, setting his pipe on the woman's back, reaching under one of the dozens of pillows under the couch. Casually, he hefted the revolver in hand, admiring it for a moment, before pulling its hammer back with a thumb and aiming it at the head of his annoyance.

"Ka'asamir, you don't the luxury of addressing me by my first name. Maybe you're brain is clotted up with too much uselessness to remember that? Let me help you air out that ugly gourd on your shoulder with some ventilation!" The bellow of the gun's discharge was absolutely deafening in the little room, and no one heard Ka'asamir's terrified shriek as he ducked just in time for the bullet to tear through the thick cloth curtain instead of his skull. The drug peddler dropped to his knees, whimpering as the yawning, black mouth of the gun turned to stare at him upon the floor.

"No, no, no! It was - a minor slip! Yes! A moment of stupendous stupidity! Please....please don't kill me, good sir Lagh'ratham." Dan Lagh'ratham let his arm fall with a derisive snort. Truthfully, it would have been one of his most excellent pleasures to have blown the weaselly Ka'asamir's teeth across the floor with a bullet aimed just below his nose - it would do well to alleviate the incredible frustration he'd been nearly drowning in.

All of the scholar's had been calling it a remarkable celestial event, an incredibly rare moment in life; an alligning of the planets, a sluggish, passing meteor. Whatever it was, Dan felt an immense hate for the object blotting out the sun in what was growing to be a solar and lunar eclipse that had lasted nearly three days, by now. And with the bright blaze of the sun, the eclipse had taken away his strength. It was more than simply an embarassment; it was a crippling deficiency. The guards had somehow found that he was in the city, and they'd been combing the streets for him. Days ago, he could have cut them down without batting an eye...now, in self imposed exile, he found only the strength to lift the pipe in his hand back to his mouth.

"Go get me more opium," he snarled. Whan Ka'asamir blinked, still upon his knees, looking at the slayer with the vacuous eyes of a cow, Dan lifted the gun up again and fired it into the ceiling.

"Go get me more fucking opium! And another whore!"

((Closed to Slavegirl))

[Slavegirl]

Upon a vast pile of multi-colored pillows, in a dimly lit room, draped with silks and linens, lounged a rather scantily clad young woman, her fingers trailing absently over the slave tattoo at her throat. She stared at the smoke curling from the incense burning a few feet away, blue eyes heavily lidded, rolling back into her head once in a while as though only half conscious. The girls at the establishment (which was not a brothel, but an opium den that happened to offer ‘other’ services) were not permitted to partake of any sort of intoxicant, at least not while working. And Natalya hadn’t, but somehow she was at least as strung out as any of the patrons - if not more so. The other girls had tried many times to have her fired, but the man who ran the den insisted she had never in her life touched the stuff. Of course, he was a friend of hers.

But Ka’asamir did not lie when he said Natalya had not partaken of the drug - in fact she had no intentions of ever coming in contact with the hallucinogen, except for breathing what was trapped within the cavelike rooms. What the girls were right about though, was that the former slave was nothing even close to sober. They would never have guessed what had kept her in near stupor for the last several months though, not in a million years.

It was the greatest benefit of the opium den in Natalya’s opinion. She lived and breathed the thoughts and emotions and fantasies of the patrons, every hallucination, every orgasm, every fear or pain or amusement. The former slave was a telepath, and had discovered the wonder of leeching from the minds of those around her - it had quite literally become an addiction, and she had no reason to quit.

“Natalya,” the voice barely slipped through the fog that had settled over her while she lay there, and her gaze slid ever so slowly to the arched doorway, lazily settling on the tiny dark man who stood there, “Your presence is required. A customer is requesting your services, and the other girls are otherwise occupied.”

“Fine,” the young woman’s voice was almost monotone, but thick with accent from her homeland in Berevar - it had almost faded away beyond notice before her bad habit had gotten the best of her, but now she did not bother to hide it anymore. Removing the violet ribbon from her hair, the jet black curls cascaded over her shoulders, the contrast between the ivory of her skin and the darkness of her hair stark. With a languorous stretch, the petite young woman rose from the pillows, the sheer silvery slip she wore sliding from one shoulder as she did. It barely covered the necessary parts (was any covering really necessary here?), but she didn’t really care, and Ka’asamir had always encouraged a bit more skin from her.

The other girls at least had the decency to act as if they enjoyed their work. Natalya didn’t care - and her clients didn’t seem to either, so long as she did what they asked. They were happy to brag to their friends that they’d had a slave girl to minister to their every whim, and her intoxication led them to think she was quite docile. It would have been amusing to see their faces if they ever found out just how many men she’d killed once upon a time.

Ka’asamir led her through the maze of rooms, past prone figures, some with girls atop them or beneath them, all in some state of inebriation. She ignored moans, giggles, catcalls, pulled herself away from groping hands and wandering fingers, and paused before her client as her boss stepped away, bowing before the man with more respect (and definitely more fear) than he normally showed anyone. Natalya simply smiled as though someone were injecting the opium that smoked around her, directly into her veins. Fear was one of her personal favorites, but she wasn’t picky.

Without so much as a glance at her client, Natalya straddled his waist, the slip hiked up above her hips (if anyone had looked they would have noticed a fine lacework of pale white scars against her upper thighs, crossed here and there by thicker pink ones - but they rarely did, or cared). Eye contact wasn’t necessary, and she immediately leaned to his neck, teeth lightly nipping beneath his ear, her hips grinding against him. This was how it always began, and soon enough he’d take over with whatever he wanted from her.