#ft. sylvia

[ofcarmichaels]

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[  IMESSAGE  ]  :  you know it doesn’t have to be a crime  . [  IMESSAGE  ]  :   i like that you’re unapologetically yourself .

[kristie-rp]

Decay

Prompts: 1. Decay / 1. “It’s really not that complicated.”

Triggers: Murder, blood

There is a woman waiting on the corner, outside a building with fractured planks scattered beneath the doorway. She holds herself with her back straight, practicing casual confidence, or trying to. Her long dark hair whips around her shoulders in the wind, and her dress brushes the ground in sheathes of a shade of grey spun from moonlight when it rests. The rain is coming down hard, but despite the fact that she doesn’t carry an umbrella, she is completely dry.

She pulls her shawl around her shoulders, delicate handspun lace that does nothing to provide warmth; it has more use as a source of comfort than anything else. Bad things have happened here; she can sense it in the wind and the rain and the shadow of the townhouse. Her lips twist, and she wishes in the privacy of her mind that she might leave this place and never look back, and certainly never venture inside – but she is being paid to be here.

A wraith in black manifests from among the raindrops. She is dressed in the epitome of modern mourning fashion, a black gown heavy enough that even the gale force winds barely move it, and a veil over her eyes that flails wildly. She drops into a well practiced curtsey. “Miss O’Brien, how good of you to meet me. Have you no escort?”

The first woman – Miss Slyvie O’Brien – quirks a brow; she has never mastered the impassivity that ladies above her prefer. She still carries the casual flippancy of a lower class citizen, a peasant, however much she hates the word. She’s also part of the oncoming revolution, ground up – not that the lady who has hired her needs to know that. “Lady Constantine. Your concern is truly touching, but I assure you, I can protect myself well enough – and if not, well, I hardly deserve the title your cousin gifted me. But enough on me – why are you without escort?”

Lady Constantine – the older from the expansive set of siblings – stiffens. “My brothers would stop me if they knew I sought your services, and I can hardly go around with my fiancée.”

Syvlie cringes, because yes, that was in poor taste. She knows about the death of the late Simon Renner – as does everyone in the city. It’s the latest in a series of attacks that have been plaguing the city, and according to the rumours, it has been the most gruesome. More blood than the investigators and the police knew what to make of, and a body ripped apart. “Of course,” Sylvie says, “I opened the way. Mind your head.”

They have to duck beneath the plants left in the doorway in an entirely undignified manner; Lady Constantine struggles and flips her veil impatiently out of the way once they are inside. She carries an umbrella, but having to set it aside to gain entry has left her damp. Sylvie looks decidedly less harried once she’s inside, perhaps thanks to the charm hanging around her neck, or perhaps because she is simply dressed in a marginally less impractical manner, with a ragged skirt instead of layers upon layers of fabric. “His –” the woman starts, then clears her throat, “the murder occurred in the study.”

“Lead the way, m’lady,” Sylvie murmurs, deliberately going for subdued instead of her usual brash confidence. It won’t help here, won’t put the woman at ease. Just because she was willing to pay top dollar to convince a witch – Sylvie – to come to this cursed place and conjure an image no one really needs to see. But Rachael Constantine has been told no too many times lately, and she has decided that she wants the answers she believes this can find here.

The study is clearly a place where bad things have happened. Whatever is wrong here, this is where it seems to originate. Sylvie lifts two small crystal orbs from the satchel at the base of her corset and whispers a charm to them; soft violet light floods the room. She passes one to the bemused Lady Constantine, and uses the other to examine the room.

The study is clearly a place where bad things have happened; she does not need to see the boarded up window between the drapes to know that. There is a desk made of heavy mahogany, two leather chairs on one side of the desk; shelves and leather bound tomes flank the fireplace, mahogany carved and painted to create a unified look. None of these items have much history in its’ current form, but she can sense the age of the trees the wood must have come from, torn from a forest somewhere far out in the British territories, and she doesn’t touch the leather for fear of what may have happened if it were collected inhumanely. Near the fireplace is a sofa in more mahogany, with once cream fabric. Once, because it is spattered with enough blood that Sylvie doubts it is salvageable, and she grimaces at the rather morbid it paints. Lady Constantine holds the crystal limply as she stares at the blood, and no one in this city need be a telepath to guess at the thoughts hidden behind that tight attempt at a neutral expression.

“This is the place,” Lady Constantine says, completely unnecessarily.

Sylvie hesitates. “Are you absolutely certain you want me to do this? The memory will have decayed by now. Details will be lost, anyway – I cannot promise this will grant closure.”

Rachael is quiet for a long moment, before she finally meets Sylvie’s gaze. It’s a glare, there’s no other word for it; she is not impressed. “I am paying you to show me whatever memory this place holds. It cannot be worse than the things not knowing  the truth leaves me to imagine.” It sounds dismissive to Sylvie, who has seen memories of awful, awful things – these are the perks of dealing with a bizarre combination of conjuration, psychic and necromantic branches of magic – but before the witch can say or do anything to deter her, Lady Constantine lifts a  hand in a clear  preference for dismissal. “What does this require? Some of his essence? A memory? A sacrifice? There’s no shortage of blood, if that is needed, though it has dried.”

The witch blinks and shakes her head. “It’s really not that complicated,” she answers, returning to her satchel to remove a tiny vial. “Close your eyes,” she instructs. Rachael gives her a wary glance, but obeys, twisting her gloved hands – black lace, of course – and allows Sylvie to paint cyan liquid on her eyelids. “Keep them closed,” are the witches instructions, before the paints her own eyelids and, eyes closed, takes the lady’s hands in hers. What she chants cannot be expressed in writing, a half-forgotten language falling from her lips. “Now – open,” she orders, “and stay quiet.”

The memories of this room follow the rules of the conjuring compound Sylvie keeps a steady supply of – everything present in the memory takes on a cyan, slightly translucent quality, like a ghost painted in vivid blue. It starts with a stained glass window exploding inwards, towards them, through the curtains they have kept drawn. It’s an odd effect; Sylvie flinches. There is no shattering sound, and Sylvie notes that this is one of the things that have faded with the decay she warned of. Rachael doesn’t know, of course, that audio would be standard, and stands with her hands clasped in Sylvie’s staring with wide eyes as a ghostly woman tumbles in with the glass.

The woman is in terrible condition; Sylvie does not need to have experience in medicine to know that. She is very blue in the image they see, blue enough that to the experienced eye, it is clear she is very pale, and cannot have hair darker than the darkest blonde. Her face is damaged enough that Sylvie assumes she has been mauled, although her features are blurred as a consequence of the decay; she is wearing an exquisite gown – much nicer than Rachael’s mourning garb, and that is certainly not poorly made – that shows streams of a much darker shade around various tears. She believes the original gown is a dark crimson, but it is stained darker by the blood seeping from the womans’ wounds. Her arm is half torn off and a spectacular malformation of her torso leads Sylvie to suspect she has lost a large chunk of flesh somewhere, and adjusted her corset somehow to keep her insides in their proper place. It is a miracle that she is alive enough to drag the curtains closed behind her, to haul herself over and collapse on the couch. She is clearly, Sylvie thinks, something supernatural – not unlike herself, but not a witch, it seems.

The door to the study opens after some minutes pass, startling Sylvie and drawing Rachael’s attention. A man with pitch-dark hair and a beak of a nose in a narrow face is standing in the doorway, and as they watch, he mouths something. Well – says something that they cannot hear. Rachael breathes the word once she figures it out – a greeting, it seems – and Sylvie represses a desire to express her disbelief at his use of etiquette even in the face of an invasion.

“Hush,” Sylvie orders again, though it is fairly redundant given this memory is mute.

As they watch, the man heads to the desk and fusses for a time, producing, to Sylvie’s surprise, some bandages. Rachael sighs softly, fondly; clearly this is a part of her late fiancées personality, helping without question. There is no outcry in response to the shattered window, or concern that his home is being trespassed upon. Instead, he is quick to help, and crouches before the woman. Rachael flinches as his memory passes through them and kneels slightly to the side at their feet; they can, just barely, see his face. Rachael is transfixed, but Sylvie focuses instead on the unknown woman, the trespasser, waiting to see what happens. After all, it is a myth that vampires dissolve rather than leave a corpse, and the only body found in this room was male.

Simon Renner fusses over the woman for a long period. A servant comes; it seems he rang for them while at the desk, and he turns to say something Sylvie cannot make out, although Rachael mouths along. He bandages what he can, and hesitates to coax her from her corset. It is as he is bandaging the arm that things change: Sylvie has to look closely to figure out what has happened. The pins he had been using to lodge the bandage in place slipped, and he pricks himself.

The changes in the womans face are blurred, of course, and Sylvie, in her morbid fascination, resents the decay for making it even a little unclear. But – she’s seen the change before, the blood lust, and apparently, this woman has no control, because fangs slip out. Simon mouths something, and this time, Rachael hisses in alarm. “Vampire,” she whispers along with her fiancées memory. Sylvie winces, and she tightens her grip on the lady’s hands: if the woman released her now, the spell would break for her, and she would see nothing, none of the answers she craves.

The invader – the vampire – may be half dead, but the smell of blood brings her to life. She grips Simon’s hand tightly and bites at his wrist, tearing flesh in her haste. Sylvia wasn’t imagining the bloodshed before, but she is now, as the vampire gulps and gulps. Rachael makes a noise that the witch imagines is one of distress, as anyone would, forced to watch a vampire drain her loved one dry.

Except – except the vampire, much to Sylvia’s astonishment, doesn’t drain him dry.

She gets him to almost dead, to the point that their positions are reversed: the woman is supporting him. She breaks away with a small gasp, and pulls him onto the couch. She lays him down, and Rachael emits a sob, clearly torn from her against her will. Simon’s lips move, and Rachael repeats it aloud despite Sylvie’s direction, as if in a particularly cruel trance – “are you better now?” – before the vampire turns away. She goes to the desk, hands fluttering as she tears open drawers Sylvie cannot see from where she stands. It seems as though she is looking for bandages that haven’t been wasted on her, on someone who will heal after consuming even half of the blood she has lost.

It is clear that she doesn’t find more medical supplies, but she instead emerges with something shining in her hand. Sylvie blinks twice before she realizes it is a knife. It is not a particularly impressive thing; if anything, it is plain. It takes on the cyan tint so completely that Sylvie suspects it is made of silver, and to her eye it appears like an athame without the handle she is used to.

“No,” is what Rachael says – breathes, really.

The vampire walks closer, passes through them. Her back is to them as she kneels beside Simon, who is already close to death.

“Don’t do it,” Sylvie finds herself saying, despite her practice, and knowing it is completely pointless – that she does not have the power to change the past.

A pale hand reaches up to cup Simon’s face. Sylvie cannot see her face – if they moved, she could, but she does not want to break the spell – but she imagines it is pity and reluctance there. She stops to say something, and she sees Simon’s lips move again. Knowing what she does of her clients’ fiancée, she imagines it is likely an exhausted assurance that there are no problems here, that this is completely fine.

It isn’t fine, of course, not by any stretch of the imagination. Sylvie and Rachael watch in transfixed horror, spellbound as the vampire lifts the knife she has found, and rests the tip against his chest, over his heart. She pauses, likely to say something else they cannot hear, before she drives the tip through and into his heart.

He must not live long, after that, but they do not watch. Rachael rips her hands from Sylvie and breaks the spell, whipping around and clasping her hands over her mouth. She refuses to look at the couch, and she lets Sylvie guide her out of the room, sealing the door against the cyan vision behind them.

I warned you, the witch is tempted to say. Only the knowledge that it rarely helps stays her hand. “The decay removed the sound,” she explains quietly. “I’m sorry. I assume you wanted to hear his voice – I know some people find that reassuring, even among the misery of it.”

“I’m fine,” Rachael protests. It’s not particularly convincing, considering there are tears running down her face, and she is trembling with the effort of not breaking down completely. The lady’s face is very white, and although Sylvie holds no real affection for the woman, she feels immense sorrow now. There are some things a person should never have to see, and that – what they just saw – is one of them. “Thank you for your assistance. The remainder of your payment will be delivered post haste.”

Sylvie hesitates for a long moment, considering, and makes the executive decision that this lady does not need her reassurance. Still – she will not leave her alone, not for the moment, and instead retrieves the lady’s umbrella from where it was left near the entrance door. She cannot comfort a stranger, but she can keep her company, and she resolves to do that for as long as it takes.