Nald'Thal's Obol

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I want money, power and glory I want money and all your power, all your glory Alleluia, I wanna take you for all that you got Alleluia, I'm gonna take them for all that they got

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Welder Wings - “The Crushes”

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Prompt #14: Part

CN: Sexual content, discussion of suicide/death.

His name was Elias. It’s been years since I’ve said it aloud—Elias—and it feels wrong to give living breath to that which is no longer, that which has not existed in years and who knew me as another woman in another lifetime, another era entirely. The revisionist historian in me wants to scratch over the details, the rawness and tumult of a time gone by, but it’s still there, isn’t it? You tell yourself convenient tales, ones that absolve you, ones that are clean and easy and unchallenging. No, no, of course you never loved them; you always knew something was wrong, sensed a shift in behavior; they wronged you, transgressed against you, they abused you...

I’m too enlightened to believe my own lies for even the barest second. I’m a therapist, for gods’ sakes, and a researcher of psychodynamics, reviewed and published like a proper damned scholar. I can tear apart my own lies as fast as I invent them, and so these questions demand satisfaction for which I already have the answer: Did I think I could fix him? Did I agree to hand over my body to a man that would hold my face down against the wet ink of my own research pages and fuck me until the notes were unreadable because I was well and truly a selfless, trampled woman who desperately wanted to make this man whole and hale? Or did I hike up my skirts in smoky clubs and let new hands dive down the front of my dress while I learnt the most intimate taste of several of his friends because I, me, Lita Briar, am (and always have been) completely depraved at my core?

Sometimes, on the contrary to a tidy little narrative that paints me as the hapless victim, I think I might just be the villain. Is that crazy? I let him dictate my meals, my clothing, my routine for months on end to give him some sense of accomplishment so he would feel less insecure about our little breadwinning situation, sure, but when I saw that no amount of sopping pussy, no amount of bared breasts, stiff nipples, running mascara, exotic lingerie or swallowed seed was enough, I kept going. When I lost weight, when I gained it, when I was deprived of friends and sleep and very nearly my job, I kept going. And when I, the siren, called him all the way to wanting my empire, gave them the gumption to demand I sign over my inheritance in the name of Elias, I had set him up for the biggest, grandest (pray forgive my tongue) cock-block of them all and I told him no. And I didn’t stop telling him no thereafter.

The bubble burst. I shattered him and ground the pieces to glittering dust with every denial that came flooding out of me thereafter. My triumphant neglect saw him reach a hand out for the tip of the tallest peak in the world and sent him tumbling down the way he came; no glory, no titles, no conquer. Three months later, I discovered his body swinging gently from an iron chandelier in my manor.

I don’t need anyone to tell me that he made that decision on his own, but did I not watch him struggle after that fateful day? Did I not choose to observe him like a caged rat slowly chewing off its own tail? At any point I could have intervened before he utterly drowned in his melancholy, but I said no to that, too, and pretended to be absorbed in my work while he languished in the inadequacies I had been abating for so long.

Perhaps my curiosity went just a little too far.

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Prompt #13: Void

CN: Weird, surreal, lightly sexual content

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An excerpt from a manuscript; the page has been marked up in red pen and comments have been left in the margins in sharp cursive.

Steady ink spills from some unseen well to the lovely valley between cresting mounds; deep-dark pitch pools in shallow navel and trickles slick over belly-hill. Creeping rivulets overtake curve and valley, dip low in the cradle of the hips where they swell into tangible fingers that crawl across and claim this living landscape. Jet touch eclipses pale flesh, overtakes softly closed lips, pries open tender pink, and plunges.

The living shadow summoned by her precise formulae has not stopped growing since it was roused from its runed slumber, and it presses with a terrible weight at each outstretched limb, oppresses her wholly as it draws so close it seems it’s fit to move through her. The piteous offering opens her mouth wide with frantic gasping and it’s not until she plucks a piercing, quivering note that the looming devil’s liquid fingers pin her tongue, too.

Poor, aching, soft sacrifice is devoured by a silhouette that drips and spreads and fills every crevice and slot, probes writhing woman with exploring thrust, knows not the mundane human trappings of shame. Its name is etched in soundless letters on a faded page, but by the end of the night, it will be branded on her body.

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Prompt #11: Ultracrepidarian

CN: Talk of death, murder Part of a series: 1. Clinch  |  2. Matter of Fact

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A fifth body was found in Ishgard today.

Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be; not if you’ve been paying attention, not if you know what I know, not if you trust that I know what I know. But for your benefit, let’s review, shall we? All four prior victims pointed to repetitious, organized behavior on the part of the killer. Young elezen men lain in repose in shallow snow, left leg absent their bodies. In spite of their grisly ends, the killer has been caring for these bodies in his own way, has been treating them with small reverences for the part they play in his dark rituals. Perhaps in this way I feel a sort of twisted kinship; much in the way I dress and prepare the decedents for funerary rites, this killer has taken the time to comb his victims’ hair, to smooth the creases of their jackets and give them, in some uneasy sense, dignity in their demise.

I know what you must be thinking. It’s absolute, incredulous disgust that I could use this sort of delicate lexicon for acts such as these. Reverence? Dignity? Am I sick? Do I feel something for this bloodthirsty aberration on the Twelve’s good and decent creations? The truth is, I do. Who is more uniquely suited to view these tableaux and scent past the outrage to truly appreciate the bouquet of the artists’ intent in the blood he’s spilled than a woman whose heritage is so firmly staked in the business of death? There are notes of respect there, in the way they were placed above the ground rather than on it. There are hints of distorted softness if you examine the methods and means by which these young men were returned to society when their lives (and legs) had been claimed; dare I say, it’s almost apologetic.

Our perpetrator is dangerous, to be sure, but not in the way the authorities like to lecture me on when I come to beg an audience for the umpteenth time, to explain to them that their expertise is nothing without the dressage of psychodynamics to guide its aim. This is not some lurking beast, all jaws a-drip and obsidian-clawed bloodlust pouncing at a ponze of meat. They eye me with suspicion when I make the impassioned (and tragically ineffective) argument that we are witnessing equal parts criminal deviance and, in a sense, the birth of a religion. To kill a god, you start with its adherents. You come to know their rites, the ways they seek to worship. You see signs of their practice and you follow them to the root and you tear it from the earth.

Alas. There will be more.

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Prompt #10: Avail

The soft essence of creased things hung like dust motes in the air; paper, leather, textile. The dim storage cellar was a crypt for old treasures, a place to let them rest in silence and darkness and peace until their abiding mistress came calling, and over time it became rare that she did. How many years now? The Briar daughters had forgotten, perhaps, the gifts of their forebears that now mildewed below the earth—or would be mildewing if not for a devoted caretaker of unusual make.

Movable ink slithers through the stale air with snakeskin shimmer, all oil and pitch. Air like held breath grows sour as it passes over, the acrid bite of something worse than death curdling the taste of what still lives. It lurks unbidden amidst thick tomes and drawers stuffed with records, prowling between the antique drawers and tables like a caged tiger that stalks with latent discontent, but with a formless grip that wields a tool most curious; a feather duster.

It tends its aged bounty with a careful flick, gagana feathers fluttering against figurines in ivory and brass, dancing over the surface of polished mirrors, marble saltboxes, and crystal vases. Next come solemn still life paintings with cowry shells and scales overflowing with a lapidary’s bounty of blood-red rubies and carnelian. Another bears stacked bones and dried roses rendered in exquisite, evocative brushwork. The past remains present in such a trove, the collection forced to live on well past its contemporaries, well past its significance to any modern being through these otherworldly means.

A rattle breaks the ritual of cleaning and a shaft of golden light is sent spilling through the cellar door accompanied by the careful footfall of heeled boots on stone stairs. The midnight servant stands at attention for the bonekeeper who has broken the long sleep; she is younger than the last, but the resemblance is uncanny, as the blood decrees. A dull pang stirs in the hollow breast of the silhouette, somewhere beyond the persistent hunger; the latest daughter has awoken.

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[strigwrites]

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Prompt #5: Matter of Fact

CN: Descriptions of death, bodies

Armand, 19, laid out like an offering on a snowcapped stone planter near Saint Endelim’s Scholasticate. Clean work, the left leg; he severed it like a man who respects the art of butchery, who understands how to work his chosen medium of flesh. This was no indelicate hand that wielded the bone saw; would he be delighted to know I recognize his craft?

Bastien, 19, no relation to Armand, laid out with care onto a stone slab with an excellent view of Abalathia’s Spine. He had a scarf wrapped neatly around his neck and tied into a fashionable reverse drape cross that had been smoothed over his chest. Left leg nowhere to be found. Someone really cared about you, Bastien, but not in a way you were meant to survive. The language of a sequence killer requires no ordinary translator, but just know that I am trying. I am.

Halbert, 23, laid out in serene repose on a snow-spackled stone bench overseeing the Pillars. Good, even work, that left leg. A shame about the whipping winds in Ishgard that day; the man’s hair was neatly combed and styled at one point (I wish my mortuary aestheticians were as judicious with the pomade, if I can be frank with you), but disheveled when he was discovered by a carpenter on his way to the Firmament. Day ruined.

Victor, 25, laid out in gentle slumber on a stone barricade near the Athenaeum Astrologicum. His lopsided silhouette was printed into the pillow of snow that made his final resting place. One leg claimed like all the rest, but not like a trophy - like he was being relieved of a burden. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve pried open the drapes and peered intently into the scrying glass of death to search for answers, only the first that I’ve done it alone. I would be lying to tell you that I don’t feel the cloak of doubt at my ability to do this being draped over my shoulders, but a stronger voice wins out that asks, am I not my mother’s daughter? After all, who better than a pious mortician to strain to hear what this terrible messenger is longing to tell me?

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Prompt #4: Clinch

A winsome fellow in a dishwater jumpsuit unfolded his willowy height from the bench and stepped up to face the weathered gargoyle stare of a perfectly unimpressed judge. Without context, it’s easy to assume he’s some up-and-coming lordling who has been taken in on a playboy’s charge of public intoxication, indecent exposure (did anyone really mind the view?), or perhaps a bout of fisticuffs at a party when he turned his rogueish smile on another man’s wife. Surely this young scoundrel will be in and out in a day’s time with back-slaps and attaboys abound.

“Your honor,” he began in purring baritone, all velvet and cigars, “I would like to plead guilty to all charges of murder as presented. The defense will not be seeking to appeal.”

Prosecutors dream of building vacation homes from mythical defendants like this who make doing their job a breeze. The ones who, either for reasons of stupidity or insanity (and very rarely, real and earnest defeat), don’t just lean into the open arms of the penal system, but fling themselves eagerly. This sentiment is not limited to the accused, however; a city on edge after a series of heretofore unsolved and particularly vexing murders is particularly inclined to let the first fool to jump on the grenade simply eat it, and sometimes go so far as to offer them a set of silverware with which they can do so more efficiently. But that’s the kicker, isn’t it? They’ve got the wrong man.

This disarmingly handsome inmate is none other than Frederic Jeaudaroux. This name means nothing to you unless you’re one of the peculiars like myself who have a niche interest in prison rosters, so allow me to explain. Mr. Jeaudaroux, you see, has been tried on accusations of tax fraud, identity theft, heresy (light heresy, as his lawyer was wont to describe it), defrauding the military, desecration of holy spaces, wanton graffiti (if my memory serves, this was pertaining to a hastily-scrawled self-portrait of his half-awoken genitals), assault in the fourth and fifth degrees, public urination, grand larceny, harassing a domesticated animal, and arson. With a rap sheet like that, you’d start to think him an absolute miscreant, but no; Mr. Jeaudaroux is, in fact, an absolute liar.

You see, I’m fascinated by this man. In spite of his multiple stints in the northern judicial scene, the man remains sartorially immaculate, a veritable dandy prancing from hearing to hearing as he plays his own barrister before a baffled courtroom. He has admitted to and even served time for a number of crimes he quite literally did not commit, but also for a number for which the evidence seems quite clear that he was to blame. Is it infamy he craves? Some measure of celebrity that he cannot otherwise achieve? Is he simply mentally unwell? Dare I say crazy? I can find no record of his family or even his name, for that matter; not in Ishgard, not even in Coerthas proper. I’ve searched for the Jeaudaroux family in Gridania and hit upon a Jeandereaux, but they died of greenwrath some time back without a survivor to their name. Cursed, fascinating, but a subject for later study.

Needless to say, he’s a regular here in the courts, and if you ask me, they’re ready to just let him take this fall for the last time if not just to spare themselves from a hundred other court appearances in the future. In their minds, maybe Frederic Jeaudaroux never committed the murder, but maybe it’s also some interpretation of justice to take him in if not to prevent some other amalgamation of mischief in this bizarre game of his. Indeed, it stands to reason that this loss of life was, in its own way, a blessing to them; a chance, at last, to watch him hang and snuff the curse of chaos, the blight of mystery that he wears like a flamboyant cloak.

And if they do, I’m going to be the first in line for an interview.

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Prompt #1: Crux

I wrap myself in death; in silk, in fur, and I tempt it when I climb the thousand-thousand freshly-iced stone steps of Ishgard after two glasses of wine. I wield it at my hip, my ritual dagger that has delivered me from mortician to politician in under a year at the same time it delivered the recently-deceased into the hereafter. I open the door to the chamber of the House of Lords and the sharp crack of my shoes against the marble are bones steadily snap-snap-snapping in memoriam of those who paid with their lives as I marched ruthlessly ahead to this moment. Death, my constant companion, implores me to remember who among the Twelve even the Fury cannot fight and win, and I bow in reverence. Even in the land of Halone, I carry the Traders with me invisibly on a decorated palanquin wherever I go.

In spite of my divine passengers, I’m alone in Ishgard, and as solitary and impenetrable as the many peaks and spires of Abalathia’s Spine that thrust jaggedly skyward and pierce the clouds from earth to heaven well above their humble roots. Too strange for civil society, too civil for the wilds, I take the Fousaux seat and give the men to my left and right a smile as empty as the legislative cruxes they’ve written into their latest proposals. Everyone here is a pretender, no one more evidently than me, but nevertheless I grant them the pleasantry of pretending I don’t know how much of my time they’ve already wasted. Their quiet play will send us into a days-long debate with no resolution, but will achieve their aim of killing time on more important bills until we adjourn for another month. I don’t mind; in the desert, we construct contracts the way the Holy See builds cathedrals. Sometimes it takes a generation to see glory, and don’t the Briars know it.

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