-------------------------- A verbis ad verbera (sexual content and violence) The city is in an uproar. Screams echo through the streets and cries of panic ricochet down its stony corridors. At least that’s what everyone would think, but the further you move from the blood bath that’s splashed like a messy frat party in the lambent fountain, the calmer it becomes. Here you still see mothers washing laundry, there dirty urchins chasing dogs for dinner, and the sound of gulls is a noise so normal in Hanghorse that those at the dock don’t believe the tale that’s been brought to them. Thus those wooden and stone jetties are beginning to empty in the harbor. After all the harbor master hisself is not there to crack heads, and all are curious to see the destruction. While others would rather shrink work or have become bored with the steam ship in the harbor. It’s broad daylight and here stands a man with a task burning his mind. He leans in the shadow of a warehouse, brown eyes fastened on the man who sits idle on the dock some distance away from him. The silver hair is like a beacon. Sensual lips marred by a scar quirk into a harsh smile. Those deep set brown eyes, slashed with dark brows, seem to burn with the intensity of their regard. Or maybe it is the lack of krrf burning away his nerves that makes his concentration seem so keen. He’s searched through the whole of Hanghorse for the proper mark. The hunger claws at him. He’s put it off almost to long. He pushes an impatient hand through short-cropped, brown curls that flop lazily over his forehead. A muscle ticks in the blunt angle of his jaw. He’s tried to suppress the need before, but it always comes back, demanding payment. The need for the drug, the need for the rage that follows, the need for the release that comes from giving into it. One part of him curses that slut of a witch that had awaken it in him. Another part howls her name to the stars for the freedom she’d given him. He scans the wharf, eyes darting to catch sight of any obstacle. He’s waited long days for the right moment. “Will Silver.” Our watcher growls the name to himself. He pushes away from the wall and approaches to were Will sits, his expression smoothing, becoming genial, cool and friendly. A prettily arrayed predator looking to sooth its prey. He is tall and well muscled. Strong shoulders and chest, tapering waist and firm stride. His dress, rough spun shirt, leather breeches, sturdy boots say he’s some kind of common man. The dagger tucked at his side is nothing unusual. He places a hand on Will’s shoulder. His rolled sleeves show the corded strength in his forearms. He leans down and glances at the bartender’s face with smile. “Ho there friend, you’re not looking to well,” he says heartily. “Ya right enough man?” He pulls away and looks towards the faintly heard commotion from the center of town. “Lot of fuss goin’ on it looks like,” he says. His voice is an easy, deep rumble of male amusement. He looks back down at Will again, and offers his hand both to help Will up and to shake it. The smile never wavers, and the gleam in his eye could only be called sociable. “Name’s Paul.” His grin is a flash of roguish joviality. “Silver right? You work at the Whale?” Paul’s dark eyes flash to a spot behind Will and then back. “You look a man in need of a drink.” Last edited by wickediamond on Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:50 pm; edited 5 times in total Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:22 pm -------------------------- "A drink..." Will repeats stupidly, smearing his good hand across his eyes and blinking them rapidly as though he'd spent too long staring at the sun. He still can't quite recall what happened between him thumbing through that loud old man's book, and him waking up in the middle of the street sans wallet. His head is pounding, there's a bloody patch in his hair, and his teeth hurt. Really... it feels as though someone punched him right hard in the brainpan. "Is there a fuss then?" he wonders, glancing vaguely towards the city. The waterfront is unnaturally quiet for the time of day, but the world seems gauze-wrapped anyway. His eyes won't quite focus and there's this distant, distant bell sounding; it's irritating. It makes his head hurt worse to try and pick out the source of it. "I had the strangest need t'look at the water," he tells Paul, accepting his hand and rising unsteadily to his feet, "Like... like I should be expectin' someone... only I see naught save that wretched Rachshane steamer. Ugly vessel, innit? Where's the art? Where's the heart?" He chuckles wistfully, squinting at the smudge of foul smoke it makes in the sky. "Had a girl once say those bleedin' behemoths would make wooden ships obsolete someday. May be a... a sound option for Sharteshane, but so long's there's wood elsewhere in the world, there'll be shipwrights knowin' it crafts a finer vessel than any ugly iron or steel..." Somewhat belatedly he says, "Good to meetcha, Paul. Aye, I tend at the Whale. Best pub in Hanghorse, tho' that ain't necessarily sayin' much. Let's... let's us lads go there and get properly palatic. Whatta mind on ye. Whatta brilliant man." Will thinks, muzzily, that this Paul bloke wants either free liquor, a job, or an introduction to Bertie the generally proportioned bar wench. And that's fine. At this point he'd probably clunk tankards with Etalarche himself if it gave him a real reason to spend the rest of the day drunk... Still, Paul seems amiable enough. Will tilts his head back unsteadily and examines the man with guileless blue eyes like sapphires set in his boyishly handsome, sun-darkened face. The only conclusion is to grin, and run his wooden fingers back through his scruffy hair, and laugh quietly to himself. Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:09 pm -------------------------- Paul almost takes him right there. The urgency nibbles up his spine and makes the muscles in his shoulder bunch. “Aye I’d have to agree, they are an ugly looking contraption,” Paul replies, an edge to his voice that has little to do with the steam ship. He glares at it though anyway to give himself something to glare at. “A damnable thing, even if it is suppose to go faster. I hear they can cover the distance in half the time, but I think I’d prefer the clean air before that stink.” He places a hand on Will’s shoulder to get him in the right direction. It’s Will’s causal laughter and befuddled look that sends him close to the edge. It would be so easy to subdue him now, a blow to the head, and then a walk down the street. The simple explanation of a friend walking home a mate too drunk to do it on his own would sooth anyone who might ask. He’d seen what had happened to Will in the square and had contemplated taking the unconscious man during the confusion. Now was better. He wanted Silver for himself but no… he was not allowed. “There’s a new place down in the Cove,” Paul offers in a causal tone. “They got a wench working there with tits that’d make a Redemptionist give up the Twins,” he says. Mischief and a hint of lust lurk in his eyes and his flashing grin reveals a chipped canine. “I’ll buy the first round and see if we can get her to sit in my lap. So you’re a sea man as well as a bartender I take it?” Paul’s eyes stray to the wooden arm, but he says nothing further about it. Paul has not come upon Will entirely by chance. Rather it is his addictions that have lead him to this place. He did not start out as a krrf addict. When he first began to venture into the Cove it was for other reasons. Paul is a minor noble and the youngest son given free rein. He had charmed ladies at court and abroad with his wit and good looks. He had learned all the gentlemanly arts of sword, fist, and horseflesh. He had found it all exceedingly dull and wanted nothing more then to rape some of those insipid ladies and strangle the dandies around him. He had killed someone in a highly suspect duel, and was banished from court to languish in Hanghorse. He’d gone to the Cove, having heard stories, to fulfill his darker desires. In the course of his time there he’d found Fane. A man that knew what drove others mad, and who had the ability to test the limitations of what you could take. Paul had a craving for violence and Fane willingly offered him an outlet. He gave him girls to use. To cut and fuck. He pushed him closer into the darker parts of his soul. He got him addicted to krrf through the tender embrace of a maddening woman, and then turned Paul’s attention to men. Fane’s specialized in a certain type of pleasure for his male patronage. Paul was addicted to more then just the drugs Fane gave him, he was enslaved to Fane as well. Fane had been highered to settle a vendetta against Will Silver. Something about taking something that didn't belong. Paul did not really care about the particulars. Fane had cut off his supply and refused him any outlets until he brought the man to him. Paul would provide the money, the occasional muscle, and unbeknownst to him at this point, much more if Fane had asked for it. He despised himself at times for his weaknesses. He was a noble born son, and yet he debased himself like this. Wore these rough clothes and pretended to be something less then what he was. It had taken but a look from Fane and the smell of krrf to erase his pride. “You will do this?” Fane had asked in that honeyed voice of his. It had been a mild request as always, like he was asking Paul to do something as simple as deliver a message. That voice had pulled at his desire, made his cock harden. Paul had just nodded and went to find Silver. Now here he was. Silver walks at his side, and they weave closer to the Cove, closer to the men who wait to help subdue the bartender and bring him to Fane. In fact they should be in an alley just ahead playing at dice. He continues on in idle chatter. “So I heard the Harbor Master took off, and then the Dock Master slips away, and I decides its best just follow the same. Find a quiet pub with some likely wenches and get shit-faced drunk. What else does a man have to do with his day?” He looks at Will the whole time, assessing his features, his form, and wondering if Fane will let him have his own time with Silver. He prays for it. “I do wonder what they’re doing out there,” Paul says with curiosity and points out at the harbor. Two small dinghies bob on the restless wave. Paul stops just past the alley. He had not look down its darkened mouth. If the men weren’t there, he’d do the job himself. His thumb is already hooked causally on the hilt of his dagger. Just a place to rest his hand mind you. But no, here they are, two brutish men, slipping from the foul smelling alley on quick feet. Dirty and coarse are their features and dress. They rush the bartender. Last edited by wickediamond on Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:39 am; edited 3 times in total Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:10 am -------------------------- "Aye, they're faster," Will replies, contentedly dwelling on the topic of horrid steamships; one of his favourite subjects, and a beautiful distraction from his headache, "But I heard some tars say them, and the blaggarts what sail on 'em are cursed - and infectin' the sea with that curse. The nereids don't like the ugly things, and I know the undines can't stand 'em. They foul the water, foul the sky, and shun the wind. That ain't proper, and any honest t'God jack'll say the same. I'd rather a paddleboat in a pinch," he finishes, laughing and digging his elbow into Paul's ribs. Oh, Master Stubbs will have his arse on a skillet if Will dares take swill anywhere that ain't the Whale. It looks bad. But the stranger's a take-charge sort've fellow and Silver finds they're already well on their way down the quay and towards the Cove before his solicitations have even managed to float to the top of his befuddled brain. He sighs, fatalistically. Change of pace could be grand. Smart lads stray from the manner of woman usually found in the Cove, but maybe followin' that wise maxim's what's so stagnated Will's love life. Nevra would bake if she found out he'd sported with some skeevy Cove bint with proselytizing tits. That in itself is an argument for Paul's suggestion... even if the bloke's thinkin' 'tis only his own lap that'll be warmed by a warm arse and a pair of white thighs. "I'm a sailor, aye!" he declares passionately, beating a fist to his breastbone, "Left home at sixteen, spent two years scrapin' hulls and holystonin' weatherdecks in the Alderode navy. Eventually traded cannons for cargo, skipped the country, and spent a few years sailin' the trades for Baldus & Sons. Lost this timber 'ere nigh a year ago, and found meself stranded in queer Hanghorse. Bit've a blessing in disguise tho'. Met Master Stubbs o'er at the Whale and he's treated me damn well. All the same..." A wistful puff of air shivers his silver forelock and he kicks at a tin can in their path, sending it skittering like a frightened rat. "Merchant sailin's a wretched lot," he relents, rubbing the back of his sore head gingerly and eyeing his boots, "It's a cage, of sorts, but God be praised it's freer in its way than tendin' bar. I been places, mate... I been such places..." The talk of the chaos in the city extracts him neatly from his nostalgia. Paranoid Sharteshanians. Irreverent Rachshanians. Will doesn't have much use for either side. Obediantly he looks out into the water, yawning at the dinghies and pocketing his hands. "Fishin' for corpses," he jests darkly, "Anyway, what d'ye do, Paul, mate? Ye've a darkish bent and an intelligent air." He laughs again. "Must be a pirate's broker, eh? I--" And he finds himself suddenly set upon by a wall of flesh. Immediately his right hand drops to a little leather frog on the back of his belt and the folded partisan hanging from it parallel to the back of his left thigh. He has it unhooked and fisted by the time the first thug is in range, but there's no room and no opportunity to extend the spear to its full six feet. Will settles for smashing at the stranger's face with it and balling his wooden fist up threateningly. Will is not a big man unfortunately. He barely reaches 5'11" and, while he's quick like a greased pig and strong as an ox, he doesn't possess the sort of terrifying lumps that convince men like Fane to employ certain chaps as bodyguards, and pummel certain other chaps into the pavement. "The hell is this--?!" he snarls at Paul, "Already had me wallet stolen t'day, ye piece've shit." Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:35 am -------------------------- Paul turns with Will as the men come from the alley. He sees he has misjudged their mark. Even with the knock to the head, Will is still fast and has his wits about him. Paul however, is just as cool headed and quick on his toes. The burn of addiction makes his sense feel even sharper. He pulls his dagger even as Will arms himself and whirls with Will to face the men. He suppresses a growl of delight at the blood that blooms on one of the men’s face. That’d be Tyler, and no asshole better deserves the hit. He can’t suppress his feral grin as the muscle staggers back and hunches over with a groan, hands pressed to his nose a moment before straightening up. He looks very angry with the blood come from his nose. Lucky for Tyler he’s a stout sort and isn’t easily put off by a little pain. “It appears that you look a wealthy man Sir Silver,” Paul quips lightly. He acts as if does not know that the comment could have been directed towards him. After all, Will could have been cursing the men in front of them. Not to mention Paul had yet to do anything overtly threatening. He looks at Will and gives him a look of wide eyed disbelief. “I was to be buying all the drinks then if you haven’t a purse on you,” he accuses good naturedly. “Well that’s not bad. Just take care of this trash first,” he sneers. The two thugs are looking at him like lost oxen. This was not what they had been told would happen. Their job had been simple and explained to them in tiny words. Knock out Silver. Bring him back. Now Paul is acting very strange and they don’t know quite what to do. “And you’re half a bit right, I am a gentleman of sorts,” Paul says in quiet tone. He crouches down, arms held out to his sides loosely, ready to fight, or pretend too until an opportunity presents itself. The thugs at least know a challenge when the see it and square off. It wouldn’t have been the first time he and Tyler have scraped. “When I want to be,” he growls. Then the world quivers. And rolls. Paul is caught by surprised. The thugs are caught by surprise. Paul stumbles to his right away from Will and then jerks back as a section of wall thuds to the ground inches from his feet in a puff of mortar and dust. The two bigger men are all but useless as they stumble forward almost falling into the harbor. The world is trying to shake itself apart. Paul looks over his shoulder. Here is the moment. All hell is breaking loose. He whirls and dives for Will. The joviality is gone from his face, replaced with a dark expression of deadly intent. His shoulder hits Will in the chest. A grunt escapes his tightly clamped lips at the force of the blow. Not as he had intended, the ground heaving beneath his feet fouls his aim. Paul reaches for Will’s right wrist and graps it, twisting it away from the other man’s body. He squeezes cruelly, pitting strength against strength, digging his fingers into the tendons there, trying to get the bartender to drop the weapon in his hand. His other hand is swinging as they stagger, the pommel of his dagger, held in a tight fist, aimed for Will’s temple. The brutes are regaining their footing and coming to help. Paul’s eyes meet Will’s, and in that moment, that glimpse of blue makes him vow to do whatever Fane requires to have this man. They seem innocence, hold a love of life, and there is pain waiting. Agony lurks in the every person's eyes if you look for it. Pain of life, lost love, too much love, jealousy, sadness, and all the myriad of shit that piles on people. Paul wants to drag that out of Will until it’s the first thing anyone will ever see. Until this silver haired bastard screams with it. It will taste like oranges and ice. Thu Feb 23, 2006 12:59 pm -------------------------- Will's been accused of naivete since long before he knew how to spell the word. Those who care for him declare his naivete a major character flaw, one that is to blame for most of the woes he has suffered in his brief twenty-two years of existence and one that would, someday, doubtless be the death of him. Why's a lad got to constantly be on his guard though? Why's he got to look to his fellow man as he does to stray dogs, assuming every one of them is likely to bite should he extend a hand? Will doesn't like it and Will refuses to do it, and so here Will is about to lose-- what, his clothes?! to a lot of fools livin' in the asscrack of Hanghorse Cove. He's holding his own despite his throbbing head when Paul not only declares his innocence, but points out Silver's lack of fundage. Then the bartender feels like a short-tempered idiot and would have apologised to the bastard if there hadn't been so many fists coming at him. He fights like a bar room brawler, Will does, but he fights like a trained soldier too, and it isn't only the blunt end of Paul's dagger that draws blood on their attackers before the quake comes-- And when it does Will is certain he's still laying on the hot, bloody pavement dreamin' fevered dreams because the trembling earth and the falling masonry are far too surreal to be the result of anything save a blow to the head. Hell, maybe he's hallucinating. But it hurts too much when his backside meets ignobly with the shivering pavement, and Silver must decide this is only another potent instance of his infamously bad luck. Breathing too hard and too loud he shoves himself to his feet again off the butt of his folded partisan only to get a shoulder to the chest that knocks the wind out of him, and a raking blow across his cheekbone from something hard and pointed. These minor physical inconveniences are nothing, however. It's the pair of feral, hungry eyes he sees when he cries out and drops his partisan, the weapon spasming from his gouged hand, that injects the first real pulse of fear into his heart. Paul looks bloody insane. He looks like those red-eyed scarecrows Will sees wandering 'round the Asylum sometimes when he delivers hot lunches to the prison guards. He looks as Will's father used to look when the sickness was on him and he'd pace the corridors of the Cathedral like a condemned man paced his cell as the gallows stood silhouetted outside his barred window. He looks like a starving tarnet wolf. And the Whale's one-armed bartender suddenly knows as clear and as certain as if God Himself whispered it in his ear that this doesn't have a damned thing to do with a robbery. "What's your g-grievance with me?" he pants but doesn't wait for an answer, jerking his silver head forward to slam Paul in the teeth. Saints, where's the dagger? Where's the dagger? Pinned, Will expects to feel it sink through his ribs any instant but in the meantime he's struggling and wriggling like a fish on a hook, wrangling his right arm around in Paul's steel grip. His wooden fist, good as any cudgel, makes its own beeline for the blaggart's temple. Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:28 am -------------------------- Paul curses the dancing pavement and the agility of silver-haired barkeeps. The dagger misses, but it does score the sweetest mark across Will’s fine cheek. If Silver’s lucky it will leave a scar to tell a tale by. If he survives Fane’s tender attentions that is. His dealer is a careful man, but it all came down to your ability to last past the limits he pushes you too. “I haven’t a prob…” Paul jerks his head back as Will seeks to loosen some of his teeth. Poor dentistry indeed. He isn’t entirely successful in dodging the blow, and pain and blood burst to life in his mouth as he jerks back. The coppery liquid spreads like melting sugar on his tongue, strangling his throat. He grunts, distracted by the second of pain. The hold on Will’s arm is all that shackles the two together for an instant. The bartender is strong and it takes every ounce of strength in Paul’s arm to maintain the hold on the captured wrist. His arm bulges with the struggle, the tendons in his neck taut. He tries to twist Will’s arm behind his back but he can’t hold on as Will gives an expert twist of his wrist. He gulps the blood down and grasp the bartender’s shirt with his left fist, using the hold to pull himself back in. His dagger is swinging again in his right, up and under towards Will’s jaw. Blade still at a safe position. He is loosing control of the fight and is ill prepared for the wooden fist headed for his own head. Paul could have been counting stars if a beefy hand hadn’t clamped onto Will’s wooden wrist, and with a joint-locking tug, wrenches the arm down, back, and twists it behind to rest at the bartender’s spine. Danny, that’s the other’s skullduggery cursed name. Danny clamps hold of Will’s arm just above the elbow, pushing his arm higher. He knows just the right kind of pressure to make a man’s shoulder feel as if it’s about to pop from the socket. How that will work with a magiked limb is uncertain. An equally stout arm is wrapping around Will’s strong, sun-browned throat as Danny manacles the wooden arm. It is Tyler that has noosed Will’s headlock. He has slipped up behind as Danny came from the left. The two have always worked well together. Tyler straightens and squeezes. It pulls Will to the limit of his height. The ground stills with one last shiver, like a maiden snuggling back into her bedclothes after being scared by a nightmare. The toughs press against Will like lovers, using sheer force and size to crowd out any chance of wiggle room. Paul steps in, not to intimidate, but to get intimate. To smell the hotness of blood and sweat on Will's skin. There is a hammering heart just beneath that broad chest. The addict is sure of it. He feels it because he still holds Will’s shirt in his hand. The fist tightens, squeezing cotton and then release. Paul grins. The toughs look away, uncomfortable with what they see in the noble’s gaze. Paul’s teeth gleam a bloody red and pink. He licks at the wetness on his lower lip, eyes fastened on Will’s mouth. “I’ll see that you pay for that,” Paul drawls as he puts away his dagger. Then he drives a hard fist into Will’s belly. “Tie him,” Paul commands and steps back a pace. “Fane will be waiting.” He looks around him, suddenly conscious of their surroundings. He spots one boy some distance away that spooks away like a startled horse the moment he’s spotted. “Hurry, get him into the alley,” he snarls. Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:23 am -------------------------- Will thinks it's his wooden arm squeaking as Danny bends it and his shoulder in a way neither were ever meant to go; then he realises the squeaking is coming from him and he drops all pretenses of stoic heroism. Profanity rips from his throat in a shrill scream. His tight-lipped grimace shatters into open-faced agony as the pins securing the upper portion of his prosthetic to his flesh arm at mid-bicep tug and tear at the bone to which they are attached. Thin cracks of blood ooze down the magicked limb as the metal ports tear through his flesh but, thank the Saint, the arm itself holds. Half the reason it took him six months to save up for this miracle of modern thaumaturgy was the bit of surgery that had to be performed to his stump prior to installation. It was a little weird to have part of himself pierced by a ring of shiny brass ports, and feel the long screws settled solidly into the bone of his upper arm, but it was even weirder not to have an arm at all. He knows. Things like carrion crows dive suddenly at the edge of his memory as the agony briefly starbursts through his left side. Vivid as fire he remembers the blood slicked cook's table aboard the Prima Donna and the first mate's concerned but ultimately helpless countenance as he watched Will's friend Grant sop up the mangled mess made of his left arm. In the end he had to order it sawed off for the boy's own good; their healer had been killed in the corsairs' attack and not a man jack aboard knew medicine enough to save their little foretopman from infection or exsanguination. The loss of an arm was no unique thing for a man bound to sail in violent waters. He'd always thought it vaguely ironic, and funny in a cosmic way, that he'd lost a limb not in the navy, but afterwards hauling timber, tallow, and ladies' corsets in purportedly peaceful waters. Ah, but that was just life, wasn't it? So's this, now; just one've God's ways of keepin' a fellow sharp. He can't get his legs vectored properly or he'd cave Tyler's nuts into his pelvis. The pressure at his throat is making it hard to breathe, too, and impossible to turn his head and find some unprotected artery to which he might apply his knuckles, or some eye to gouge or throat to bare-handedly shread. Paul's a bleedin' lunatic and Will wants to slowly remove his eyes and serve them with cocktails tonight at happy hour. "Fuggoff!" he rasps around Tyler's fat arm, "The hell's Fane? The hell're ye? So help me I'll pound the livin' tar out've yeh, needlenobbed fuckin' ponce--!" The gut-punch makes him want to curl up like a pill bug. He stiffens in Tyler's grasp, his pallor flashing white, then blue, then cherry red. The modest silver rood on the chain 'round his throat slips from behind his collar as he struggles to bow his head and wheeze through his nose. Twin-worshipping Gefendur have their quadraglypt and the dogmatically contrary Iocans have their rood. Will's a smart lad. He knows better than to wear his tiny symbol of devotion where pissy Twinners will see it and throw fingers in his face, but wear it he must the same way he must draw a breath every few seconds despite Tyler's ropy forearm; the same way he must blink and sweat and swallow and piss. It's as part of him as his big blue eyes. They're good eyes and rarely fail him, even when his belly's on fire. He spies the retreating urchin and tries to shout after the lad. Alas his voice is only a nightmare croak and the air won't come back into his lungs. Just... give him a minute. He'll swallow the last bitter bits of his pride, catch his breath, and scream his bloody head off. There's no way he's going into that alley - NO WAY. Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:20 pm -------------------------- Paul is unconcerned with the curses. Tyler hustles Will towards the alley without another word. They reach that dank shit hole between building, leaving Will little room to fight, and brutally suppressing any resistance with a twist on his arm or pressure at his neck. "Jus' keep quiet," Tyler hisses. “You’ll meet Fane soon enough,” Paul says as they step into shadows. His voice is cool, but his lips twist briefly in a brutal smile. His hands shake. Tyler releases his hold after one last esophagus crushing squeeze. The arm slips away, but Danny is already there kicking Will’s legs out from under him. They follow him to the ground, with Danny still holding Will’s wooden wrist. Tyler puts a knee in Will's back. He grabs the bartender’s free arm, twists to cause joints to scream, and with quick efficient motions wraps a length of rope around Will’s limbs. It is not a simple knot at his wrists, but encircles his forearms so that it pushes his shoulders up, leaving little room to move. Danny hesitates and then loops a tight knot around Will’s legs. Then they step back and haul Will to his feet, a hand under each arm. Paul steps in. “How are we doing Sir Silver,” he inquires politely. “This won’t take but a moment, so be a good man and go along and it won’t hurt as much.” He tangles a rough hand in Will’s silver locks and strikes him an open-handed blow across the face. His fingernails dig into scalp as he jerks Will’s head back. Danny’s rough fingers squeeze Will’s jaw, forcing his mouth open. “Shhhh,” Paul soothes like a mother with a petulant child. He stuffs a cloth in Will’s mouth, and then completes the gag with another tied over it. He presses a finger to the tiny rood that sits at the dip of Will’s collarbone. He chuckles and it’s a ugly sound. “Where’s the cart?” he asks as he traces a hand across Will’s cheek, following the edge of the gag, pressing on the spot where his dagger had scored a mark. He releases his hold on Will’s hair and punches him in the stomach again. There are no hands to support the captured man this time. Danny and Tyler release their hold on Will and slip back into the depths of the alley. There is rattle of wood and a creak of wheels. They pull a simple cart to where the bartender is. “Alright let’s get the hell out of here before anyone else sees us,” Paul orders as Tyler and Danny toss Will into the cart. Bags, cloth, and a tarp are thrown over him. The two take a handle each at the front, and trot out of the alley. Paul hitches a hip onto the backlip as it passes and holds on. He begins to whistle a lilting tune. Excitement is coursing through his veins. Almost as good as a krrf high, but lacking the hallucinogen edge that the drug gives. The thought of what he could do to Will Robinson causes a flush to stain his cheeks. He wants to hear the leather crack of a belt smacking that bronzed skin. Hear the groans, deep and pained, coming from between those smiling lips. Feel his warm skin split as he cut it. Bleed him bit by bit from his strong throat. Coat his cock with that tangy liquid and then fuck Will’s mouth. Paul keeps up his tune as they rattle over the cobblestone, but his eyes are locked and vacant, focused on a distance vision. If Will could have seen, he would have found them heading into the center of the Cove’s whorish embrace. They pass places of ill repute, dock workers, sluts and sinners, junkies, corpses, and pirates. They eventually come to a elegantly appointed building, painted black and trimmed in red. There is a sign affixed next to the door. Painted in gold letters, it simple reads Fane, Yagger, & Smith. There are no women hanging out of the windows displaying there wears at this place of ill repute. It looks almost like a businessman tossed into a crowd of whores and common folks. Tyler and Danny are sweating from the brisk pace at this point. They pull around to the back of the building and a door opens. Dim light illuminates the alley. The tarp and bags are torn away, Will hauled out of the wagon, and tossed over Danny’s shoulder like a barrel of beer. Tyler and Paul fall in behind. They enter a hallway, wallpapered in red and gold, and laid with a dark carpet. Tasteful oil paintings and watercolors hang on the walls. It looks like a gentleman’s club. It’s only when you start to look closer that you begin to see a difference. The paintings are not landscapes or portraits. Although they do sometimes feature men, women, and on occasion livestock. There is a smell in the air as well. A biting flavor that sticks to the tip of your tongue and then coats the back of your throat. Expensive perfume teases the nose, and the heavy musk of sex is there also, but it is this bitter coppery smell that catches your attention. It would be at this point that you’d hear the moans. Not purely of pleasure. Muted screams uncurl, barely hugged in rooms by thick walls. Wooden doors line the hallway and one opens as Danny passes. A girl stands chained, another wields a whip that cracks loudly across her back. The bound one screams as a bloody line blooms across her skin. Two people lay tangled on the floor, skin slick with sweat and other fluids, naked and fucking. A man steps out of the room, topless, staggering, blood on his chest and face. He closes the door behind him, and heads in the opposite direction, not even looking at Danny or his bundle. The smell of krrf gives the hallway a spicy, sweet smell. They jostle down a set of wooden steps and another long hall. Then down a set of stone steps. It grows quiet and cool as they travel downward. The walls and floor are stone. The doors metal. “Is this him?” The voice is mild, sounding interested and amused. It is pleasant voice. Cultured, smooth, and deep enough to be masculine, but without the rough growl in Paul’s voice. “Yah,” Paul replies. There is the sound of a key grating in a lock and a door swung open. “She’s still in here?” Paul sounds surprised. “Put him in with her,” the voice answers. Then the sound of retreating feet. Danny steps into a stone cell and flings Will off of his shoulder like he was a sack of grain. He steps out, and Paul lingers in the door a moment, a strange smile on his face. Then the door closes with a slight boom, and the key grates in the lock. There is a moment of silence, then a rustle of fabric. A scrape on the stone. Then soft, hesitant hands touch Will. ‘Sir.. are you ok?” It is a girl’s voice. Soft and sweet, filled with the round vowels of the country. Her fingers shake, as she loosens the knot at the back of Will’s head. She moves around to the front of him, still on her knees, and pulls the cloth from between his lips. “It’s ok, I shan’t hurt you. I’m Abby,” she introduces herself in a hushed tone as she looks over the man that has been tossed into her cell. Fine, auburn hair frames a young face. She looks like a dairy maid fresh from the farm. Her lips are soft, a becoming blush stains her cheeks, and her eyes are a large, beguiling hazel. An ugly bruise mars her chin, and there are bruises wrapped around her neck, each shaped like an individual finger. Her clothes are simple garments. “Oh sir,” she says in a mournful voice. She clasps her fingers together and presses them to her belly. Almost like she’s giving condolences for the dearly departed. “He’s goin’ be right wicked with a handsome man like yourself.” Sat Feb 25, 2006 10:42 am -------------------------- Will's dazed. He blinks stupidly at her, seeing something else. The things... the things in this place. He's a good boy. He's a worldly, brave, unsheltered, but good boy. He's had his little escapades with forthcoming tavern bints, their powdered breasts streaked with sweat and spilling over their bodices 'til he could see the pink halos 'round their nipples as they reached across him to take an empty goblet. He's hired whores on first nights ashore after long and joyless cruises, and even, once, he was awakened in a barn by a town Sheriff after coitus with a... a half-cat woman. It was not good to tup a cat, even if she could talk and walk on two legs. That wasn't usually something a lad had to have proven to him, but Will had taken the lesson with a grain of salt and gone on better for it. Even his fantasies are straight-edge. He never wanted to dip Nevra in chocolate and lick it off every inch of her. He never wanted to cut and fuck new holes in Kaelan, or teach Freya Vian there was more than one way to lay. He'd had his first woman at fifteen, sweetly, a whore specifically employed by his Commander to bed the lads biweekly, slaking their lust so they might more firmly affix their minds on God, the temple, and their order. That was what sex should be. Sweet. Something inside the barkeep shrinks from all of this... makes him feel like a child wandered into hell, and Will nearly wants to panic. Abby's presence allays this somewhat. He can swallow back his fear for her and try to smile reassuringly. Poor thing's probably ready to crawl out of her skin herself... and those bruises... They inspire something like anger and suddenly Will doesn't feel so helpless. He sucks air as soon as the gag's free. From the belly punches to the smothered cart ride to the lung-constricting hold that great fuck had on him as they walked that infernal hall, Will hasn't had a good breath of air in a while. The adrenaline's long left him. His face stings, the torn stump of his left arm throbs, and his ribs ache. "Abby," he sighs. His voice sounds all right, not trembling nor impuissant. None of this makes even the meanest sense in his brain. He doesn't really like what the young lady's implying, either, and strenuously ignores it. "I'm Will," he whispers, wriggling about and trying to lever himself up into a sitting position against the wall. His left arm is on fire. It'd cost him a bloody month's salary to get the soddin' arm repaired after this garbage. "D'ye... d'ye know what's... what's happening?" A sane person at last and he has so many questions he's barely coherent. "That pisshead Paul babbled somethin' about some Fane. Who's that? What's this disgustin' place? What d'they want with me? Or yourself? Goddamned... Goddamned bastard, that Paul. I'll rip his smilin' face off and nail it above me door t'scare the ghosts with." Sat Feb 25, 2006 1:21 pm -------------------------- Abby makes a sound of distress as Will fires questions at her. “Shhh, he might hear you say such things.” Her eyes are large and reflect her fear. “Paul is not a good man.” She leans forward and with careful hands helps Will to lean against the wall. “Here. Hold still a moment,” she replies and bends over his bound legs. She tugs at the tight knots, but they are stubborn and it takes a moment to get them undone. “From what I’ve gathered, Fane’s the owner here,” she answers as she works. “He runs this.. this place.” The knots come undone and she unwinds the rope from Will’s legs. She raises on her knees and scoots up and places a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Lean forward.” “I dinna know why yer here,” she continues. “I’ve been here,” she pauses for a moment her voice catching. “Alone for quite some time. Paul grabbed me at the market.” She reaches around Will, pressed to his body, tugging at the knots that bind his arms. “Bloody things,” she curses and tugs harder. “Paul works for Fane.” Finally the rope loosens and falls away. She unwinds it and then helps Will to easy his sore arms around. “They do… do,” she stammers. “Awful things here.” She sees the blood on Will’s sleeve where his prosthetic has tore at his skin. A frown tugs her lips down and she touches it with a sad sound trapped in her throat. “I’ve heard people scream,” she whispers. Her fingers flutter from the cloth of Will’s sleeve to her throat. “Paul did this to me.” Her voice dips lower, and she darts a glance at the door, as if Paul would step through at any moment. Or maybe to avoid Will's eyes and keep from showing him the true depths of what's happened to her. “They are cruel men. Fane the worst.” She looks back at Will, and then tears at the hem of her skirt, making a small bandage. She stands, and crosses the room. There is a small pallet in one corner, a metal pitcher and a cup sit on the floor. It’s far cleaner of a cell then one would expect. She pours water from the pitcher into the cup, and then comes back over to Will. She wets the cloth, and then offers the liquid to Will. “Fane and Paul favor men. I've heard them talk on it,” she says. “Tis the only reason I think for them grabbin’ you like they did.” Then daps at the bloody spot on Will’s face. Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:01 pm -------------------------- "This's... this's...!" There isn't an adequate word! "Let the fuckers come in 'ere. Ye stay behind me, darling, and I'll get us out've here quick as liquor." As soon as she's freed him from the ropes, Will's on his feet and kicking the life back into his knees and shins. He flexes his sore hands and wrists like a boxer readying himself for the ring. "I heard whispers've such places, mind ye," he mutters, "I'm a tender at the Whale and we see all manner've trash waft in there on the trades, speakin' of sport in the Cove the likes've which no civilised man'd stand. S'vile; right vile. And damn my eyes for thinking that rat only wanted a drink with me!" He needs to slam his fist against that door and he needs to screeeeam! He needs to call Paul every monosyllabic insult he knows and then start comparing the sick fuck's cock to a number of different writing instruments. The fear in Abby's eyes makes him sane again, and he's obediently still and smouldering as she dabs at his stinging face, his blue eyes trained on the ground. "'Favour men'? N-no, I must've only caused someone some... some slight, s'all. M-maybe that sod Ras. He and Tabitha - she's a lass works at the Whale - he got her alone in the privy last week and put a hand up her skirt. She didn't like it. She came out spittin' nails and I broke his nose. He said he'd get square with me somehow." His matted silver head thunks back against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut. He's only wearing a thin muslin shirt and a faded grey waistcoat missing a few of its brass buttons, but even righteous anger won't keep this cold unease from raising gooseflesh down his back. "Thankee," he tells Abby sincerely, opening his eyes and sipping at the water gingerly, "Ye seem a kind lass; hardly deserve this... Have ye tried pickin' the lock? If it isn't magicked shut, may be somethin' I can do to get it open. Or-- or next time someone opens the door I'll charge 'em and smash 'em in the head and then we can light off afore they rouse the rest've this ungodly place." Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:52 pm -------------------------- “I dinna know what you’ve done,” Abby replies again her eyes wide as she watches the bartender. "To be sure to find out soon enough." He is acting very fierce and she wonders just how long that will last when Fane and Paul begin with him. It will be interesting to see why Will has been brought to her tiny cell. “I tried to escape once,” she continues. “I… I was punished.” The memory makes her shiver. She daps one last time at his face, her expression controlled, but her her hands tremble. She drops the cloth in her lap and traces her thumb just under the mark. It is a light caress. She meets his eyes and smiles. She looks shy and hesitant. “Doesn’t look to bad now. Tis a noble idea to try and knock them out, but they never come alone. Would be likely two or more to deal with, and that’s bad odds.” She smiles and lays her hand on his cheek. “T’would be better for you not to get hurt.” She looks at the door and then the lock. “I dinna try the lock, but then I don’ have the skill for such.” She smoothes her hands down her skirt. She has generous curves, and one can guess very well why Paul took this girl. She is fresh-faced, tiny at 5’1, but with the body of a girl use to work and good food. “I believe Fane has a touch of magic, but yer welcome to try your luck with the door.” Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:13 pm -------------------------- Abby is a very, very pretty lass. Were circumstances less trying, Will would be on her like a salty cologne. As it is, the most alluring maneuver he can think to make is to save them both from all the very unsettling, horrific things she keeps hinting of, but kindly does not describe in detail. "S'all right, darling girl," he whispers conspiratorially, bobbing forward and kissing her chin in a big brotherly manner as she strokes his jaw, "Let's see what's to be done. Disheartenin' just sittin' here like louts and licking our wounds, eh? Or you licking me own wounds. Appreciated all the same." He even manages to laugh, weakly. Then he's moving towards the door, gingerly crawling his fleshly right hand over his wooden forearm. A long, thin rod's slid from its underside and then twisted about carefully, exactly, before he crouches to put himself level with the cell door's lock. The little impromptu pick is inserted in the keyhole with all the silent subtlety he has available to him, and he talks very quietly as he works at the pins to allay Abby's fears and cover up the sound of his efforts. "Man learns a lot of things and sees a lot've places from the deck've a trade ship. Mate've mine a few years ago was a thief. Bit've a plonker but good for a drink and a tale and a song. Used to pick the liquor cabinet in the cap'n's cabin and we'd be pissed all through the dog watch. Went ashore with him in Fort Blanche and we shared a room for a few weeks. He started a wee locksmithin' business and was teachin' me t'be his apprentice. How fortunate is that? Everythin' happens for a reason. I can do a bit of calligraphy and shoe a horse too. Jack of all trades right here, Abby. What d'ye do yourself?" As dearly as he'd like to personally castrate Paul or either of those neckless goons the fuck had with him in that alley, Will would be just fine never seeing any of them again. Paul just had... something in his eyes. He seemed possessed or mad, and... and... 'favours men'? Silver doesn't want to have that soundbyte of information expounded upon. He's never had any specific biases against poofters, but he isn't friends with any either. There's something wrong with a man unable to properly appreciate plump breasts and a wet mound of curly-haired fanny. But Will's a good boy. Really. Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:32 pm -------------------------- Abby comes over to watch as Will fiddles with the lock. She stands at his shoulder and looks on with curiosity as he tries to free them from their prison. “It sounds as though you’ve have an eventful life,” she says. “I canna imagine havin’ ever left off to other places. Sailin’ and…and lockpickin’. Tending a bar at some tavern. Although I’ve heard the Whale is a nice sort of place,” she adds in haste. “My pa and mama have a farm. We tend ire yak. I been there my whole life. At least until Paul took me. But then as you said, everything happens for a reason,” she murmurs his words. Abby looks at Will’s bent head and then touches the spot where he had kissed her, glad that he does not see her do it. She feels shy around him. He is nothing like Fane or Paul. More like her pa and brothers. Good men with good intentions. A bit rough around the edges but with an honest soul. “You’re a good man Will,” she said, the words popping out of her mouth before she can pull them back. She reaches out, hesitates, and then lays a hand on his shoulder. At the moment the lock speaks with a flat, grating pop. It appears Will’s skills have done the trick. Abby’s hand tightens and she stares at the door with wide eyes. She looks terrified as she steps back a pace, her hand slipping away from Will’s shoulder. She hugs herself, hunched inward as if a chill has come into the room. “Tisn’t a good idea,” she whimpers. “T’will be frightful angry if we try to leave.” Sun Feb 26, 2006 6:03 am -------------------------- Silver nearly swallows his tongue in excitement as the subtle little clicks reward him, as beautiful a sound as any penny whistle, fiddle, or birdsong he's ever had waft in his ear. The door's held closed with one hand and the tender stands quickly, grinning like a skull and stuffing the pick gratefully in a waistcoat pocket. "As I said!" he whispers over his shoulder, eyes shining, "Just as I said! Simple bloody pin-and-tumbler. Now we're going to scarper out've here, love, and ye must run run run! I won't leave ye but I can't carry ye either. Run like the wind! You're a good, strong farm lass! Ye know how!" He's breathing fast enough to hyperventilate. Need to calm down. Need to be cool. Need to be a pillar of shinin' bravery for Abby and show her how it's done. "Stone hall down," he whispers feather soft in her ear, "Then stone steps. Then another hall, then wooden steps. Then one more hall full've tuppin' bloody... bloody monsters. Keep hold've me hand. Only need t'make it onto the street and I know a place in the Cove we can lay a while." Before she can protest or make him lose his nerve with another damned warning, his right hand's slipped into hers, warm and calloused. The most tempting thing to do, of course, is kick the door open so hard it smashes into the wall outside, but making so much noise would be foolish. There's no reason to think there's anyone in the hall at all. So no, better to shoulder them both through with one quick, quiet movement. Will does just this, his grip like steel around Abby's hand as he yanks her into the prison corridor, then takes off flying like a guilty pickpocket. Sun Feb 26, 2006 10:59 am -------------------------- She hangs back as they move on quick feet down the hall. Abby continues to whisper under her breath about how much trouble they will be in. It’s a litany, a curse, a rounding tumble of words that come one after the other. She looks around with wide eyes as the doors flash by, and as they near the last one, her bare toes catch on uneven flagstone and she stumbles. Her wrist rips from Will’s hand, her own going down to stop her fall. She looks up at him, her eyes screaming at him to run, even as her lips begin to form the word, “Go.” The door to her right is opening on soundless hinges as she stumbles, and Paul is on her before she can even scream. He wraps himself around her like a lover. His dagger pressed to her throat is a kiss. “Sir Silver,” he calls out. “Fane will see you now,” he nods to the open door. “Please step in, so I don’t have to give darling Abby a second smile.” He’s grinning as he says the words. The knife's sharp edge presses into the flesh of her neck. A thin trickle of blood racing down her throat matches the tiny mewling sound she’s making. Tears fall down her cheeks. Her whole body shakes with the force of the emotions pounding through her. Her fingers wrap around the wrist that holds the dagger, but they seem limp and unable to do more then rest there. “Mr. Robinson,” The voice echoes out into the hallway. The same one from before that had sounded so pleasant. Abby stiffens in Paul's arms as Fane speaks. “Please come in and join us, we have some business to conduct.” Paul, his eyes alight with glee, and the krrf now burning through his system, chuckles and backs into the room. Danny waits at its center. At his feet, lie manacles attached to chains that run through rings on the floor, then up into the ceiling. The stone floor dips toward a drain. In the far corner sits a man. At his side a table runs the length of the room, and wooden boxes cover its surface. Fane is as fair as his name sounds. Long, pale hair sweeps around his shoulders, neither blonde nor white but some shade that could not be called a human coloring. His skin is alabaster pale. His eyes are accented with slender brows. There is a faint tint in their depths, a drop of manganese blue released into water. High, prominent cheekbones give him a gaunt appearance. As he turns his head to pick up a goblet, the pointed tops of his ears peak from the curtain of his hair. He sits in a simple wooden chair that has been bolted to the floor. His frame if long, slender, and yet without the qualities that would make him seem frail or feeble. Strength hides in his broad shoulders, and the tapering V of his chest and waist. His fingers are elegant with short nails filed to points. He wears simple, loose, black pants, a black button-down shirt, and his feet are bare. He is a contrast to Paul who seems dark and overtly masculine next to Fane. "Danny will see to your comfort," Fane calls, sounding like a gracious host. Now it is up to Will. Leave Abby to her painful fate, or come in and talk with a madman. What’s a bartender to do? Sun Feb 26, 2006 11:25 am -------------------------- Fane smacks of the Reaper Grim, sporting manicured nails and a scythe done up in designer colours. Even his fine, lean face reminds Will of a skull, thinly veiled beneath a white shroud of buttery skin. Paul's a minion and Danny's a minion and Will can hear the casket creaking closed. Every atom wants to be hurled down the remainder of this hall. He could make it out of the building intact, he thinks. Get onto the street. Find Minnow's friends the Fingers and promise them payment for a bit of protection on his way back into the city. Then Will could quit the Whale and leave Hanghorse behind. Maybe spend his meagre savings on passage out of town. He could go to Ikkraenig and visit Freya and live out the rest of his life ice fishing... But he can't leave Abby. He knows she's likely to die whether he stays or goes but what does that matter when one murder would be on his head and the other done in spite of all he had tried to save her? He can be noble and go into that room to God only knows what, or he can be a safe, smart coward and maybe survive the day... Will's nearly paralysed. He fists the tiny rood at his throat, his blue eyes trembling. He already knows what he'll do. He's going to be a fool. A plain, rash, unextraordinary fool. So he remains, his hands tied and his heart beating terrified in his ears. He has to scream at his legs to get them to move; they'd been tingling with excitement seconds ago but they've now become curiously like jelly. The dipped floor in that room is just like an abbatoir's... "Back the fuck off've her," he snaps at Paul, creeping forward, "It was me own idea. I grabbed her 'fore she had a chance to protest and hauled her after me, thinkin' her fair. Back off her." He can't do it! He can't make himself enter that damned room! What a coward he is! It's... it's only having the proper frame of mind, is all. Maybe the fair-haired fellow only wants to jaw a while, and all the rest is only to intimidate him. Well, Will Robinson has been thoroughly intimidated and he's ready to capitulate! "Back off her," he warns Paul again, and finally enters Fane's "office", approaching Danny on unsteady legs. He's certain he'll be sick with nerves if his stomach doesn't stop flipflopping. "I think there's been a mistake, sir," he addresses Fane right off, "I'm only a simple, foolish tender at the Whale, y'see. No offence meant t'yourself or your lads, but I-- I have no interest in any of th-this. I'm certain there's somethin' we can work out between us, no?" Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:05 pm -------------------------- “Such a noble man,” Paul taunts the barkeeper as he enters the room. “Developed a passion for our Abby have you?” He presses the knife closer and Abby arches her body into Paul’s to get away from it. Fane looks at Will with hooded eyes, a faint smile playing on his lips. Danny steps forward as Will gets into arm length and grabs his wrist. Tyler appears in the door and closes it behind him with a soft click. There is no lock for this room. It’s not necessary. The manacle is clamped on and he moves to Will’s left as Fane speaks. “Mr. Robinson, I am sorry to inform you, but a commission has already been paid to me.” A tiny smirk played at the corner of his mouth. “I doubt you can top my client’s fee. You have an unfortunate choice of enemies.” “Abigail.” He says her name like a question wrapped with a warning. “Did Mr. Robinson respond like we were told he would around the fairer sex.” Her eyes roll in her head towards the sound of Fane’s voice as he speaks. She moans, a low throaty sound, and continues to press her back to Paul. He has sheath the knife, and even now lowers his head to lick the small trickle of blood from her neck. “Yes Fane,” she whispers. Danny and Tyler grin while Paul adds his rough chuckle. Fane however looks less then amused. “You were suppose to bed him.” Fane’s voice dips with disapproval and Abby shivers, only the expression on her face isn’t fear now, but excitement. Her nipples are tight and pressing against her thin muslin shirt. Paul’s hands are busy on the buttons, pulling the material apart, revealing her large breasts, and the bite marks that mar them. “He wanted out,” Abby replies. She looks at Fane as Paul’s fingers tease those taut nibs. “You are lucky we stopped him.” Fane beckons Abby over to him. She slips from Paul's embrace, crosses the room, and falls to her knees at his side. Fane smoothes a hand over her brown curls, and then pushes the shirt from her shoulders. “And what do you think of our Mr. Robinson?” She looks at Will again for the first time since he’s come into the room. Gone is the innocence that made her eyes so beguiling. The fear still lurks there, but also lust. Avarice desire. “He’s sweet. I want to taste his tears.” “I would never have thought a Redemptionist would go so far against an Iocan,” Fane said with wondering amazement in his voice. He shakes his head as if the thought is incomprehensible. Delight shines in his eyes though at the idea. It was a job to delicious to let pass. “Damnest luck,” Paul quips and grins. Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:52 pm -------------------------- Glass: Danny doesn't get their victim into the manacles easily. Will twists and struggles the second the brute's coarse fingers make contact, his wooden arm pulling painfully at his torn shoulder. He knows it's a futile gesture but he's starting to feel like a cornered animal. His lips peel away from his teeth as the manacle snaps shut and he lunges at Danny with his wooden fist balled, swinging at air when the chain pulls him up short. He nearly loses his footing but catches himself on the ball of his right foot, swivelling around sweaty-eyed for a three-hundred sixty degree glare. Abby's treachery doesn't provoke anger or a threat; only a sullen disappointment that ennervates Silver more effectively than a kick to the ribs or a fist to the temple. She's stared at with dolourous disbelief, as a little boy might look at a chum who's stolen his lunch, even with her tits swinging free and her nipples rolled like coins in Paul's greedy fingers. Will feels his shoulders drop and his chest grow cold and hollow. This is all, really, quite out of his league. He could have been quit of this if he'd not stopped when she'd fallen. He is a fool, and his naivete would be the death of him, just as Nevra and Elias always said. He barely trusts himself to speak. His fist's kept taut at his side. Wild blue eyes move from Danny to Tyler to Paul threateningly. "I don't know any Redemptionists," he growls. Well, they come into the Whale from time to time, but he's hardly mates with any of the misguided zealots. There was Adjutant Triste, who used to beat their half-drow barmaid Marika, and who Will tried his damnedest to get alone in an alley so he might break his face, but that pillock had been killed in the Borgo fire. Will can't think of a single one now; just a sea of malignant faces blurred and noxious in his mind's eye. "So I'm Iocan," he continues truculently, "So what. There're a handful've Iocans in Hanghorse. S'not against the law, not even the baby-eatin' Redemptionist's barmy law." Wicked: Fane shrugs and flicks a hand in the air as if the matter is of little consequence. "You've angered someone righteously enough." He looks at Paul and snaps his fingers. "What is the man's name?" His lips purse and a tiny wrinkle appears between his eyes as he frowns. "He's in the command of Praetor Bizet." Paul stays silent watching Fane with an expectant expression. Even if he'd known the answer he wouldn't have said. Fane would get the name for himself, and woe to the man whod answer before he remembered. Fane stands and turns to the boxes on the table muttering as he beginnings to open them. Abby leans back against the chair, her now topless body revealing the scars on her torso and arms. A wealth of cuts, and puckered wounds. Some new and others long healed. Etched into the cupped place on her shoulder is a mark that is not so random, but entire deliberate. A brand and marker of Fane's House. "Tall fellow, dark hair, and the most frightful scowl. The fire of zeal burning in his eyes." This last bit is said in a mocking, theatrical tone. Fane chuckles and begins to pull out thin, sharp edged scalpels from the box. "I would have to agree with you, Mr. Robinson: the Redemptionist are 'barmy' as you so delicately put it." He looks over his shoulder at Paul. "Well get him situated. He'll be here soon enough to make sure we've done a proper job." Fane's elegant fingers wrap around a wide strap of leather. It makes a shushing noise as he pulls it from the table. It's tip scrapes the floor as he crosses the room. "Talon," he says in triumph. "That's the name. I believe he said something along the lines of, 'That Iocan slut has stolen his last Twins fearing woman.'" Fane raises an eyebrow at Will. "It seems you've seduced the wrong gal Mr. Robinson." Glass: "They're all fucking lunatics," Will plaints desperately to Fane. He can grab the scalpels with his fake hand - that won't hurt. He'll break them, but can't move too soon, have to surprise him. His fist's kept just at his hip but he's ready for Paul too. A fine sheen of sweat makes his taut throat glisten, running into his eyes and flattening his knife-cut silver hair to his head. "Ye don't want to work for 'em, d'ye truly? Even f-for gold just makes you another dog of the Eye's. Better'n that, aren't ye? I meant nawt by-- by any've it. I never tried to convert anyone. I never spoke against Gefendur. I followed the laws." Abby can't be entirely wicked. Silver looks to her for some glimmer of compassion or understanding. "I've done nawt wrong. Ask Master Stubbs at the Whale, he'll vouch for me." Wicked: The eyebrow lowers, and Fane's expression grows unreadable again. He watches the bartender in a moment of silence. Pale blue eyes take in the sight before him. The fine shudder that's just under Will's skin as he stands half retrained. The sweat that coats his skin and makes it glisten. His voice already ready to surrender to whatever he demands. Begging him to release him. "Money is not the only reason I've taken this job," he says. Abby and Paul seem to sense something in the air. She shivers and her own gaze darts way from Will's, unable to look at him. She wraps one arm around her body, the other resting in her lap. Every muscle in Paul's body seems to tighten though, and he quivers like a horse ready to race. His dark eyes are fixed and intense on Will. Fane takes another step forward, and Danny and Tyler melt back to the door. Their expressions are flat and they look at some middle distance, stone golems now for all appearance. Fane's eyes flick to Paul, and the man springs forward like a dog released form leash. His teeth are bared, hands outstretched. "I had but to see you, Mr. Robinson," Fane is saying in his cool voice, even as the leather strap begins to swing at the pair. "And I knew why Talon felt so threatened. You are glorious. And I will enjoy every minute of breaking you." Glass: Will meets Paul with a roar of contempt, kicking off his left foot and aiming his right at the idiot's navel. His free fist is thrown wide, then vectored quick as a darting snake for Paul's throat, to tear into its softness and rip his jugular free. "Sodomite cocksuckers!" he snarls, "Fucking... fucking monsters!" Little victories, little attempts, and no thinking about the long term! Wicked: Paul doubles over with the kick and is not prepared for the hand that is coming for his throat. He gurgles, face red as his lungs burn with the need for air. He sees death in the other man's eyes but can't scream. He'll be killed like a deer brought down by hounds, throat ripped out and bleeding on he floor. The leather strap cracks around one of Will's leg with a thunderous clap and Fane yanks Will's feet out from under him. In his hands, with the elven blood that courses through his veins, the leather is wielded like it's a light thing. Paul launches himself on Will's prone form, breath trickling into his lungs. He aims a punch for Will's chin and then screams, finding oxygen as the leather licks his own back, cutting his shirt to shreds. He does not slow the blow, but pain shudders over his flesh. "Be that stupid again and I'll kill you myself Paul," Fane hisses. Glass: Will's hand comes away bloody, a raking gouge in Paul's sweaty throat. He doesn't have time for Fane. He can't look at him. He doesn't want to think about him. Paul's close and who knows if he'll have another opportunity to obtain some small retribution on the animal who led him into all of this. Scrabbling to catch the ground with his flailing boots, Will gets his feet under him again only to be clocked in the jaw, his head snapping sideways, but his hand's already coming down again. He claws Paul's bloody back, gouging his wooden fingers into the freshly shredded muscle and skin. Wicked: Paul growls at the pain and goes with it, falling on Will so they're chest to chest. "Locked in a lover's embrace," Paul rasps. The quip lacks it's usual light heartedness, and comes out an animalistic sound. Fane's strap falls again, licking over his back and shoulder, touching Will's arm, and then gone. Paul's pupils are blown wide, the drug burning off with frightening quickness as they grapple. He can feel the blood rage rushing in. His heart pounds in his chest, and he's hard as stone. "That's it, boy, try to rip my heart from my back," he howls and swings his forehead at Will's nose. Glass: Agony explodes backwards through Silver's head, jarring his eyeballs in their sockets and rattling his teeth. A flood of blood and sinus hits the back of his throat as his nose breaks. What he can see of the dismal little room past Paul's head darkens marginally, scintillating at the edges with queasy starbursts. A slash of blood stark and naked on his arm from the harsh kiss of Fane's strap, he tries to roll his attacker off but his manacled wrist immobilizes him, so he digs deeper into Paul's back, crushed beneath the bigger man. He digs through his shoulders with all the desperate, crazy strength of a snared animal, tearing at his shoulderblades then winding his gory hand up and snarling it in Paul's fine hair. A gob of blood's hacked into his eye. "Gerrofa meee!" Wicked: Paul screams as those unnatural fingers part flesh and find bone. Pain rips down his arm, then through his chest and back. Hands aren't like knives, they don't cut with a neat precision and thus Paul's back looks like its been gored by blunt horns. His hand weaken and he jerks back as bloody fluid hits his face. His eyes remain open, but he can see little now. His fingers tangle around Will's throat, squeezing, pushing away as he's hauled back, hair ripping out as Will pulls. He uses the momentum to half straddle the silver haired bastard. His mouth is open with each harsh breath he takes. He hangs there a moment grappling for what to do next. "Oh for fucks sake." Fane sighs with impatience, sounding put upon, steps to the side of the two men, and with a expert sideward flick wraps the strap around Will's arm. He strips the strap out, tearing the arm free, along with a sizable chunk of Paul's hair. He steps forward, catching the limb on the outward fling with his bare foot. He stomps down pinning flesh where it meets wood to the floor. "How tedious Paul," he admonishes. The dark haired man moans, punches Will in his unprotected face again, and rolls off. He grabs the manacle, pulls it, and there's a rumbling noise in the ceiling as Danny moves a lever by the door. It gives enough slack for Paul to secure it around Will's wrist. There's a second rumble and both chains snap back any slack, dragging Will across the floor. Glass: "Stupid... s-stupid blighter," the bartender pants, cutely congested by nostrils stoppered with blood. He groans and spits a curse as his left shoulder's hauled up, pulling at the damaged bone and pins again, but it has nothing on his nose. The distant belltones of earlier, at the dock, were nothing; this is a full-fledged roar of iron cathedral bells knocking between his ears at high noon. All ten fingers, fleshly and artificial, flex in agony above his head. He pushes off the floor after the slide, sitting up enough to ease the strain of the chains upon his shoulders, then twitchily climbing to his feet again, blood dripping off his chin. "B-both of ye are sodding dogs," he mutters hatefully, rattling his head a bit to clear it. There's something a little less frightening about Paul now. He'd made that bastard hurt. Wicked: Fane applauds, the strap still held in one hand as Will crawls to his feet. The chains hold his arms so that he can raise them no higher then his waist. "Magnificent," he drawls, his deep voice smooth and even. "Leave us," he orders Danny and Tyler out of the room with a cutting glance. His nostrils quiver as he breaths in. They hurry out as Fane lets his head fall back and his eyes close as he takes in the scent of blood. Paul lays trembling on the floor, braced on his hands and keens. Fane looks down and steps forward. He grasp Paul's hair in one hand, pulls up, and rams his knee into the other man's face. Paul screams, falls onto his back, eyes wide and sightless, blood pouring from his nose as he withers on the ground away from Fane. Blood smears across the stone floor. "Mr. Robinson, I am very glad that you've joined us today. Paul has been getting cocky of late and I think you've taught him a valuable lesson today. Abby strip him." Fane folded his hands together behind his back as he paces. He sounds like a school instructor. "We are very strict on our lessons around here." Abby hurries across the room, a pair of scissors pulled from the table as she passes it. She cuts Will's coat from neck to waist, and then down the sleeves. "It is one of the reasons you're here today. Someone felt we could deliver the proper lesson to you." He grins. "I don't mind obliging, but I'm not above admitting that this part is quite fun." Glass: It's not in Will to strike at a lady - even one like Abby - and he doesn't doubt that's why Fane chooses her for this particular task. He cringes from the icy shears and grits his teeth impotently when his modest clothing flutters in pieces to the floor, opening up his dark torso beneath her white fingers. Will's deep-complexioned from fingertips to throat in an even coat of warm, sun-kissed brown from working the weatherdeck of the Whale and freelancing on weekends at the drydock outfitting ships with new standing rigging. There's not a hair on his chest though a fine trail of silver bristles beneath his navel, disappearing down the front of his buttoned trousers in a neatly trimmed path. He stiffens self-consciously, glaring around Abby at her posturing, self-important boss. He does grin a little, briefly, when Paul's kneed in the face. "You're an elf," he notices at last, blinking at Fane's ears blearily, "Sh-shouldn't ye be in a forested glade some'eres, frolickin' and skippin' about with a pipe? Nance with your own k-kind and lemme be." Wicked: Fane laughs. It's a loud, unselfconscious sound, and his eyes crinkle with amusement. "I don't frolic," Fane replies, the amusement running away, replaced by narrow-eyed anger. "I am only half elf and I doubt I'd be well received by my own kind. Either of them." This is obviously a sore topic. "Get up," he snaps at Paul, and the other man pushes himself to his feet on shaking knees. He sways, displaying bruises on his face, and body. Marks cover him like Abby. The blood that smears him is obscene. Abby has not moved from in front of Will, and she reaches out and touches his chest with hesitant fingers. She places them just below the rood, and then begins to traces them downward, following the curves of Will's well defined chest. "No Abigail," Fane growls. She snatches her hand back like Will would suddenly burn her. "And take that damn skirt off," he continues with a wave of his hand. His attention is on Paul though. The fabric flutters to the ground and she retreats back to her spot by Fane's chair, with one last look. Fingers play over the shredded flesh, pressing, searching, causing tiny gasps to explode from Paul's lips. He strips the ripped shirt away, and then wraps himself around that bloody body. His white hands dance over Paul's chest and then lower, teasing his shaft. The strap dangles and then Fane is taking Paul's hand and putting the strap in it. "Now let's show Mr. Robinson what his lesson is," he purrs. Fane steps back as Paul turns to Will with renewed intent lighting his eyes. The strap sings as it whistles through the air, and Abby moans as it meets Will's chest. Glass: Galvanized, Will jerks back as though shot through with electricity, his shackled hands darting up protectively to his chest but inevitably only straining against the chains. After half a dozen strokes his raspy yelps of protest are full-fledged whimpers. He snarls through them defiantly, lunging shoulder-first at Paul through the rain of blows, and then bowing his head and shrinking into himself defensively when the manacles prove far stronger than his desperation. Wicked: Paul stops, panting and light headed, as Will curls into the blows. He groans, the pain in his throbbing back and arms a torment. He's doing this with ripped muscle and bleeding skin. Fane stares at him and then Will. He motions for Paul to continue, but the junkie can only feebly flick the strap. Fane makes a rude noise of disgust. "The rings," he orders Paul with a roll of his eye. "Abigail," he snaps and nods toward the door. She scurries across the room to the two levers. Fane nods and Abby flips the switches, dragging Will closer to the floor until he's to his knees. Paul approaches and releases the rings on the floor with a quick flip. It's a flaw to be sure, any prisoner could release the rings and gain the length of chain, but of course you'd have to know the catch was there. The chains go slack, and Abby activates the switch on the left one. It drags Will upward, the right one still limp. Glass: "Lot of-- idiots--!" Silver gasps, laughing feebly into his chest. Set Paul against him and watch Will tear him to bits, then order the blighter to smack at him with a strap a while, and then yell at Paul for not hitting him hard enough?! "What-- manner've half-arsed torture operation is this?!" he demands, rattling the slack chain and drawing up on his tip-toes as his left shoulder burns. How much longer had he until his wooden arm snapped off his shoulder entirely? Ha! He spits blood again but at the floor this time, his nose purpling and swelling about the bridge and his chest and shoulder oozing and broken. "Where's this-- Talon? I want t'see the pillock and spit in his fuckin' eye!" Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:30 pm -------------------------- A frown tugs at Fane’s lips. He does not look pleased with the criticism. “He is late,” is all he says, but glares at Abby. She finishes the task she’d been assigned and Will’s other arm is stretched upward. She bites her lip in consternation. Fane retreats to his chair, looking at the dangling man in contemplation. He is surprised that the bartender hadn’t taken the open invitation to fight. “I’m sorry that you’re finding our hospitality lacking Mr. Robinson,” Fane continues. “Talon gave us strict instructions on how we were to treat you, and I feel obligated to give him that without ruining my own fun.” He spreads his hands and shrugs. “The lout is late though, and maybe with the earthquake that is the reason.” Fane stands back up and moves back to the boxes. “Since that can’t be helped I suppose we’ll move on.” “I’ll try to meet with your expectations,” he continues as he pulls a small leather pouch from the box. “I’d imagine you have a high threshold for pain considering what it had to have taken to get that arm attached. We’ll see how it goes.” He looks to Abby and then flicks his blue eyes and chin towards Will. “It is so often a misconception that all we do in a place like this is cause pain. People forget that we offer pleasure as well.” She returns to Will’s side. Her fingers tremble as she releases the buttons on Will’s pants one at a time. “I’m sure that you’ve experienced how close pain and pleasure can lie to each other. A lover bites you in the heat of passion.” Abby is gentle and her expression inquisitive as she parts that restrictive fabric. “That second of pain makes the rest much sweeter does it not?” Fane continues, resting against the table as he watches. Abby has never seen a man with silver colored hair that isn’t old. She watches Will’s pretty eyes as the buttons come undone. When the last one falls away, she brushes a lock of his sweaty hair from his forehead, cups his jaw in a kind hand, and then grasps the waist of his trousers and peels them down. The cloth binds his legs. When she meets the resistance of his boots, she pulls them off with care, and then his pants. “I am sorry Will,” she whispers, and rises on tiptoes to return the kiss he had given her earlier. A light touch on the cheek. The kind you’d give at the end of a conversation. “Bite him Abigail,” Fane breaths. Her eyes close, and she acts without question, sinking her teeth into the fleshy part of Will’s jaw. This is not a playful lovers nip, but hard enough to almost draw blood. She kisses the mark as she draws her head back. Mon Feb 27, 2006 4:18 am -------------------------- ...God, his shoulder hurts. Will's bravado dies away quickly as his second arm goes up. The wet tear of the old artificer's brass pins is palpable, the slowly shredded milimetres a keen torment of their own. Fane's complaining of Talon's tardiness is met with a grimace and a grunt. "Earthquake was-- right queer," he opines shortly, as though commenting on the weather were perfectly natural in these circumstances. He hadn't really had the opportunity to dwell on it, but he'd assumed Danny or Tyler was a mage, and the earth tremor merely some powerful quake spell to knock him off his feet. Well, damn. If that had been an honest to God earthquake, the city must be bedlam. He... shouldn't expect any help. Not that he'd expected any anyway. Will can feel the heat rising in his face and chest as Abby fiddles with his fly. It reminds him, obscenely, of posing nude for Freya Vian in her squalid little flat in Stormhaven. Those had been good days. Good friends. Good sweets. Her boyfriend had nearly murdered him when he found out. An uncomfortable mew sneaks out of his throat as he finally hangs naked, just a bit of meat in a butcher shop. His legs are shapely and dark as his arms, even beneath the silver fuzz on his calves. Will's popular with the ladies for more than his boyish charm. A generous handful of flacid, circumcised manhood dangles in shy self-awareness between his thighs, crowned by the logical conclusion to the monkey trail beneath his bellybutton. Manicured pubic hair is the norm where Will was raised. His is trimmed into a tidy rectangle sitting above his exposed cock like a jaunty baret. "No worries," he whispers, his face averted as Abby apologises, "I know that shitnob makes ye do this. S'not your fault. I know't." The bite's an interesting phenomenon. It quickly reaches a peak of pressure that diverts from the galling pain in his shoulder. It's almost a pleasure to fixate on it, though he fearfully anticipates the point where she'll break skin and he'll have to cry out-- It doesn't come, and he wilts against her, wincing, relief and adrenaline warming in his veins like wine. The gentle kiss atop the prickling pain is an interesting contrast. He's never felt anything quite like it and... can't hate it entirely. Her hard nipples tickle his naked chest, another tactile stimulation he refuses to let himself be swept up in. He squeezes his eyes shut instead, his bare toes reaching for purchase on the floor and some relief against the pulling pain in his left shoulder. Would it be better, he wonders forlornly, to submit to the woman and let her fuck his brains out? At least then he might-- might be better able to keep the poofters from convincing his body to do something he knows it doesn't really want to do. Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:43 am -------------------------- Her arms slip around him, and she presses into his naked flesh. “He does make me,” she whispers back, distress in her voice as she holds him. Her lower body dips into his, and she flexes her hips, before continuing her ministrations down the strong column of his throat. She flicks her tongue over his nipple, tasting blood and sweat. “But.” Her lips tremble against his responsive flesh. “I like it.” Then she sinks her teeth into the meaty skin that surrounds that sensitive nub. “Enough.” Fane’s voice cuts through the palatable silence. Paul suppresses whatever he was planning to say until it becomes a strangled noise deep in his throat. Even Fane’s gaze is narrow and intense. Abby steps back with her lips parted. Her wandering kisses have strained her lips a rosy red. She gathers discarded pants and boots, crosses to the table, and takes a pair of manacles that Fane hands her in exchange for the bundle. His fingers touch her lips and then he gathers her in a tight embrace for a deep kiss. She whimpers and he answers with a light groan. The manacles dangle in her hand. They are on short chains. Fane releases her and she moves back to secure them to the rings on the floor. She licks Will’s knee with a quick dart of her tongue, her fingers teasing along the length of his calf, before locking the restraint around his ankles. Her hands creep upward. “Both of you leave. Paul get your back tended to,” Fane snaps. “Knock when Talon arrives. I will keep our guest entertained until then.” The duo leave the room with obvious reluctance. Fane unbuttons his shirt and discards it. His chest is devoid of rough, masculine hair. His skin looks smooth. The muscles in his chest, stomach, and shoulders are lean, silky, and sculpted. He approaches Will, and then walks around the bartender. His movements languid as he assesses what hangs in agony before him. He stops when they face each other again. The silk of his pants brush Will’s bare legs as he steps closer. Fane wraps one long-fingered hand around the back of Will’s neck, then slides them upward to grasp sweat-soaked curls. He leans in, pale eyes steady and locked with the bartender's. At the last moment, he changes direction, and places a tender kiss on Will’s jaw just were Abby had left her mark. “I think it’s time we began,” he murmurs against hot skin. Mon Feb 27, 2006 2:07 pm -------------------------- Abigail was a soft suppleness against his torn and angled body; he could have melted into her, wretched treachery, devilish deceit, sick, sadistic wantonness and all. He wanted to, for a moment. She fit their hips together and he felt himself strain towards her, his cock hardening completely independant of his feelings towards the bitch. It would be easiest - and perhaps wisest - to just give Paul and Fane what they wanted. That bloke Talon thought he was a whore; maybe he'd just fucking be a whore and get this over with. Besides... if he was willing, it wasn't rape, was it? The idea of having that on him-- of being somehow attached to a deed like that-- was terrifying. It was utterly emasculating. He'd never live it down-- fuck that, he'd never be able to tell anyone. But he'd know it! And he'd hate it, and himself, and her, and this entire fucking city. So he decided he'd shut his eyes and pretend this was Nevra. He settled his sore chin in Abigail's hair. He cringed and grit his teeth as she rocked him and molested the scourgemarks on his chest, his shoulder screaming even if he wouldn't. She bit into his chest and the tears squeezed from beneath his lashes; not tears of pain, but the stubborn tears of a child who knew he had to do something he didn't really want to do. He watches numbly as she separates them suddenly, leaving his naked shaft straining against his own taut groin. It is singularly humiliating to be dangling from a chain, naked as a new babe and so obviously needful in such a personal, sensitive area of his anatomy. He doesn't dare kick at Abby as she straps the cold manacles around his shins - less because she's a lady than because it would set him to jiggling so obscenely and the idea of it makes him hot across the face. "Hoi," he calls feebly as she moves away again, and finally departs. His bicep strains, a vein standing in sharp relief, as he hauls his right side up fractionally to ease his left shoulder. His truncated arm is already bleeding freely, long twigs of vibrant scarlet following contours to his navel like spilled ink. He hisses like a cat against Fane's cheek as he draws near, and tries to arch away. Damnit, why's he got to be so bloody hard? The kiss makes him queasy. The hand in his hair makes his head swim. "I d-don't care for men," he tells the pale creature plainly and fiercely, fists balling somewhere far above, "Understand? 'Specially no fae fuckin' fruitbat hedonist shitnobs. G-get yer rocks off on Paul. Don't fuckin' kiss me again. Don't TOUCH me." Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:25 pm -------------------------- Fane stills Will’s willful tongue with a harsh, grinding kiss. He growls and bites and the only thing that keeps him from pushing past Will’s lips and into his mouth is that thought that he might not get his tongue back. He pulls away, pressed hard to Will now, the other man’s erection feeling hot against his belly, and twists Silver’s head back so that his mouth can kiss and bite at Will’s exposed jugular. His other hand reaches upward and he digs his fingers into Will’s arm where it meets wood. “I will touch you as much as I wish,” he growls against Will’s chin and then thrust himself away from the bartender with a curse. His chest is shuddering with the hard gulps of air he’s taking. For the first time color comes to the half-elf’s pale face. Two, faint pink spots stain his cheeks. He’s hard, the length of him pressing against the fabric of his pants. He turns away and stalks to the table. The tiny leather pouch he had gotten out earlier is flung open to reveal needles, some ornate and others plain, stunk in its inner lining. It is no bigger then his open palm. He wraps it around his wrist and secures it with the leather strap and eyelet that had kept it closed. It is a grim bracelet. His composure is still gone as he crosses back over to Will. “You responded quite well to Abigail’s hard attention,” Fane snaps. “It appears we won’t have to start quite as slow as I thought we would.” The half-elf wraps his right hand around the head of Will’s cock and squeezes, stroking downward with an expert motion. Fane has taught many of his girls how to pleasure male clients. But his is not the soft, gentle fingers of a female. The grip is firmer, demanding. The thumb knowing just when to brush the head, his hand knowing just when to move the skin and twist. He grasps the back of Will’s neck in a tight grip with his free hand. “Just close your eyes William,” he leans in and breaths against those inviting lips, and then kisses them as tender and clinging as any maid with her first beau. “It will soon be alright.” Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:58 pm -------------------------- Will tries. Will tries very, very strenuously. He concentrates on Fane instead of putting himself elsewhere, because he wants to willfully reject the bastard, not merely survive him. He can smell the sour stink of wine on his breath and lets that odour put him in mind of fetid, gritty afterholds nauseous with the stink of rotting rat carcasses, stale bilge, and mounds of shit where the mate's little apprentices squat and shyly relieved their bowels. The first kiss hurts. Will tastes new blood, and the cold, rusty sensation of a gash in his mouth as the half-elf brings their lips and teeth together brutally. He thinks on his shoulder, too, as Fane's hot mouth puckers and heats his skin, raising gooseflesh in a shivering nimbus between his dark nipples. The pain in his shoulder is starting to make him sick to his stomach. It is a fine, fine distraction. The bone is splintering, surely. He can feel the atrophied remains of his bicep ripping before the pull of the brass pins. Good. It hurts. He loves that it hurts. He makes it hurt more, snapping and gnashing at Fane's kissing mouth and writhing in the chains. He's not going to make it easy, even though each time his nose so much as brushes against Fane's face it's an explosion of pain. Good! He can't breathe through it at all now, and he's gasping for air by the time the half-elf ends the kiss, his gleaming shoulders heaving around his bowed, sweat-dark head. "Fuh-fucking... sick..." It's too much even to spit out the taste of him, or the little pooling of blood between his teeth and lip. It runs out the side of his mouth and spots the floor. "Y-you're sick..." Or he's sick. He can feel pre-ejaculate dribbling down his thigh. It and the blood attempt an impromptu composition on the tiles. It seems like Fane's on him instantaneously, as though he didn't have to cross the room in a pedestrian manner like some mere mortal thing. There are no proper distractions from the unwelcome hand around his cock then; nothing comes to mind at all. The bastard is too bloody savvy. Will has to whine a strangled "Bloody hell!" smashing his forehead onto the half-elf's shoulder and grinding. Tendons pull in his arms and his knees flex helplessly, the manacles digging into his ankles. His eyes open a slit and he can see his blood dribbling down Fane's white chest along some desultory trajectory. Just be done with it! Fine, just be done with it! It's been too long, and Will is for once glad to have the stamina of a quadraped. He drives his hips hungrily into Fane's wretched fist and knocks their temples together, hiding from his lying lips in the depression between his throat and collarbone. His relentless whispered chorus of bloodyhellbloodyhellbloodyhell! quits in a strangled, "D-damnit!", and he comes with one final thrust into the slim bastard's hand, quivering and fire-hot from nape to knees. Mon Feb 27, 2006 6:10 pm -------------------------- The half-elf stumbles a step, as the other man’s head connects with his body, and presses down. His lips part, and a groan, light and encouraging, floats past Will’s ear at this first sign of acquiesce. “That’s it man,” he breaths, voice deep and encouraging. His whole body is shivering with some barely restrained emotion. Fane had taken this task expecting nothing more then a nice payment. The second he’d seen Silver on Danny’s shoulder though, he’d known he would have to do more then the Redemptionist asked. How he’d never seen Will Silver or heard of him was a curse on the Twins name, but he’d been delivered here without much trouble, and for that Fane would thank the Mother. His hand slips from it’s place at Will’s neck and wraps around the other man’s back in an embrace, leaving barely enough room for Silver’s hips to move. The blood and sweat from Will’s chest smears across his own. It’s hot and invigorating to smell. Desire. Desperation. Distress. Defiance. Will smells of all these things, the scent of sex and fear work like an aphrodisiac on Fane. He closes his eyes for a moment, as Will’s cock becomes slick with its own cum, just to enjoy the tactile sensation of it. His then stares across the room, eyes intent and burning as the bartender gives in, grinding into his churning hand. The litany falling from those split lips hit him with little puffs of hot breath on his shoulder. His groan turns into a growl as he feels Will move closer to orgasm. He lowers his head and sinks his teeth into Will’s exposed shoulder. Fane’s expression transforms, a sense of relaxation coming to his eyes, the growl becoming a purr of encouragement, his lips tilting upward in a smile until Fane is gorgeous with joy. The half-elf looks like this is the best place to be in all the world, with Will Robinson tangled in his arms, his cock shooting streams of cum over his hand and chest, and the voice of the other man driving a steel spike of desire straight down his spine and into his loins. The stifled damnit isn’t even past Will’s lips and Fane is dropping to his knees, grace in motion. His lips catch the last drop of cum and blood as he sucks the still hard cock into his mouth, head bent to the task. He was once told by a male client in the throes of ecstasy that with his long hair and slender build, he resembled a woman from this position. The client said it always made it easier when Fane sucked him off. After that Fane had beaten the man, and then made sure to stick his cock in the gent’s face whenever he gave him head. Will is big, and he fills Fane’s mouth, and then his throat. He swallows Will’s cock, relaxing his throat to take in as much of the man’s length as he can. He knows there’s another release in Will. He wants the bartender weak from orgasm, unable to form a coherent thought, or ignore the pain Fane is going to inflict on him in a moment. His agile fingers take second place to his gifted mouth. He strokes the base of Will’s cock as he pulls back, cupping and squeezing the tight testicles beneath that hard shaft. He applies just a hint of his sharpened nails while his tongue swirls at the head, before he’s licking and swallowing his way back down to the base. All his attention is focused on Silver. Fane is a sadist yes, but he is a thorough person when it comes to pleasure and pain. There are few who walk away from the half-elf, that don’t return later for more. Mon Feb 27, 2006 7:13 pm -------------------------- Madacy had given good head. She'd been a wee slip of a girl, no more than sixteen and Will only eighteen besides. She practised on a pitbull her father kept, she had told him eventually. The explanation had come after he'd tried to explain he had to leave because the Donegal Gordon was the last departing ship of the season and if he didn't go he'd miss making his billet in Saerhn. He'd be awol and penniless and didn't Madacy understand this had only been an autumn fling? No, Madacy hadn't understood. She'd known only that she had to capture Will's heart by satisfying his lust, and in so doing win her way out of hell. Her father would beat her to death, of course, if he discovered she'd broken her hymen outside of wedlock, so that left Madacy only her lips and her throat and her tongue to snare the fickle attentions of Silver Will. Disgusted and afraid, he'd left her sobbing and shipped out that afternoon. Madacy eventually hanged herself, he'd heard. Breathless, Will himself hangs now, twitching and heavy as Fane takes him in his mouth. Brief, bitter pleasure throbs languidly away with every beat of his heart. The pain rises in his shoulder again. His nose feels a separate entity; some bluntly throbbing tumour reaching tendrils through his skull. His lip prickles, and his jaw, and the old dagger scrape across his cheek that seems like a joke now, all leading back to the hammering pain between his bruised eyes. Five eternities seem to pass between climax and the realisation that Fane has dropped to his crotch, pleasure seguing into a pleasure his conscious mind has trouble tracking. Will pulls against the manacles without thinking, hissing as they cut into a pulse point at his good wrist. He watches the white head bobbing in his lap with ephemeral, numb detachment, then barely manages to choke back a groan as Fane's reptile tongue rasps over a sensitive spot on the underside of his cock. He wonders, briefly, if the half-elf's tongue really is forked. Fucking Fane's hand, well, that wasn't terrible. He'd rather put it in a woman's hand, but he has hazy drunken memories of the Valyne barracks, circle jerking with little mates barely grown into their pubic hair. That was childhood, when it didn't matter so long as it felt good. Grown men don't stroke it off like that nor let their mates do it either; leads to abuse, irreverence, sinful... sinful obsession. Says so in Scripture and Will is a good Iocan lad, even so far from home. But fucking a man's hot mouth is in no way excuseable. Fane could be a woman swaying and sucking and tugging the skin tight at his base, windmilling his devilish tongue in wild gyrations that cause Will to drop his head back and grimace at the ceiling-- Aye, he could be a woman, but he's not. Will knows it and disgust fills him like a drug. The black rood tattooed on his shoulder itches reproachfully. His ears, his jaw, and the distended cords of his neck burn red. Eyes slitted, he's able to see the world tilt a few degrees on its axis as he pumps hard down Fane's throat, smashing the half-elf's beautiful nose into the silver velcro patch of fuzz above Will's swollen length. Then Fane swallows and the constricting throat muscles send spasms of unwanted, unasked for ecstasy up Will's mottled body. The pinch of pain from pointed nails pushes him over the edge and a minor, second explosion goes off in the sadist's mouth. It doesn't feel minor to the bartender. He expels air sharply through his clenched teeth, spraying the top of Fane's fair head with misted pink saliva. His feet rotate on his ankles and his hands on his wrists. He grabs the chains above them just to have something to cling to as he gulps air, the orgasm moving through him like a rain of grapeshot. His head remains arched back, adam's apple bobbing. He doesn't want to look at the victor though he barks his name once, sharply, and some small sane part of him hopes it sounds more like a threat than a plea. Will's voice is never like Fane's; not soft like the twilight lace on a widow's gown, liquid like absinthe poured over sugar, hard like a razor skating across a throat. Will has a little boy's voice ever, ready to laugh off catastrophe as a game of God's or suggest a bender or a smoke or a night on the beach. He opens his mouth now, murmuring to the ceiling, and sounds ten years older, gruff and exhausted. "...f'ye plan... t'kill me... do a mate a-- a favour... and kill m'now, f-fore that Redemsh'ist comes. S-say I b-bled t'death or-- or summat." He doesn't care about the salt tears running back into his hair. The last of his pride blew up in Fane's face. Mon Feb 27, 2006 11:13 pm -------------------------- “Kill you…” Fane mutters as his lips slide from around Will. His elegant hands cup and stroke with a gentle touch. “Kill you?” Fane’s voice sounds harsh, ill-used, and scratchy, like he’s just woke up and Will’s voice a dream. His lips are bruised and puffy and blood is leaking from one narrow nostril. Fane sniffs, and licks the sticky fluid as it reaches his upper lip, the taste mixing with the salt flavor of Will that coats his mouth and throat. He presses a last kiss to the head of Will’s cock and then into the wiry hair that leads upward. He crawls his lips and tongue through that path, following it’s direction like it’s an inverted arrow. It’s suppose to lead you down, but Fane would rather sniff after one of the bloody lines that dances down Will’s torso. He follows it to a dipping belly button, then the base of a bronzed breast bone, and finally the hollow of a muscular shoulder. His hand’s crawl over wet skin. Hips, ass, thighs, sides, chest, shoulders. Clenching and caressing as Fane pulls himself to his feet, pressing into Will’s body. The half-elf steps back a pace, he sways on his feet before stilling, rock steady. He looks at Will through hooded eyes, taking in the tears, the blood, the sweat, the exhaustion, and the tremble. Every inch of Will that’s weathered abuse. The strap marks cut across his skin in crusting lines of abasement. His nose is swollen, giving his handsome face a distorted appearance. The cut on his cheek and lips seem out of place, to small for the quiver that’s racing over Will. Such a small scratch to get so worked up about. His arm is the real worry. Blood leaks from it at a steady pace, trickling down his chest. Fane can tell Will isn’t far from truth. If that isn’t dealt with soon, the barkeep will bleed to dead. “I have no wish to see you dead William,” he replies and strokes his fingers along Will’s jaw. “There’s to much to do still.” His aching cock screams agreement to that truth. His eyes glow. The scent of magic, willful and clean, shifts through the room like a summer breeze. Fane’s hand tracks up Will’s arm, smearing the blood there, and stops when it touches wood. The glow in Fane’s eyes is the only warning Will gets, as Fane opens his power onto Will’s flesh. Blood vessels contract, muscle knits, and skin grows at an itchy rate. Fancy that. Fane is a healer. It makes for a convenient skill in his line of work. Among his other talents are a few minor tricks. A mage light. Some fire manipulation. A spell to immobilized. One that casts a glamor. Another that pulls music from thin air. All minor in his hands next to his healing touch. He does just enough to slow the bleeding. Of course, the arm sits wrong, and it’s healing around the prosthetic's pins incorrectly, but at least the bartender won’t die from blood lose. A band-aid to stave off death, not a true healing. It will do little to dull the pain. Fane has other ideas on how to distract Will's mind from that. His hand slips away and its Fane’s turn to tremble from the use of magical energy. “That should hold you I think. At least until Talon gets here,” he says with a faint smile, voice returning to normal. “It’s time for the next lesson William.” His long fingers, still sticky with blood, pulls a pin from the leather strapped around his wrist. It is a long darning needle, only its blunt end has a fall of silver bells so tiny, the sound they make is at the very edge of human hearing. He does not wait for Will, but spreads his fingers on the meaty part of Silver's pectoral, stretching the flesh, and then piercing the very top layer of skin with a quick, sure thrust of the needle. A tiny drop of blood appears but Fane is already moving on, another needle in his fingers. He threads them into Will’s right breast with the easy of a seamstress darning a dress. They march down the silver-haired man’s chest with military precision, pins perfectly horizontal, spaced evenly apart. His hands are steady and he does not foul his aim no matter the condition of the person beneath his hands. The last pin pulled from the wrist strap is tiny, both in length and width. It gleams pure gold. The only space left is at the top edge of Will’s nipple. “This one wil tickle,” Fane warns, gaze stern, and presses the needle’s sharp point to flesh. “You must hold still,” he orders, voice deep and commanding. With each piercing of Will’s flesh, Fane can feel desire pooling in his loins. His cock is hard, hot, and demanding a release. The pins ripple and distort the bartender’s skin. Fane knows the pleasure that can be found in such exquisite manipulation. His nipples are puckered, pale, hard nubs as his mind follows the path of his recollection. The first sign of perspiration breaks out on the half-elf’s skin. It turns the alabaster skin, smeared with blood, to polished marble. His eyes are fever bright and absorbed with the task at hand. Tue Feb 28, 2006 3:31 am -------------------------- So Fane wouldn't kill him. Will doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Well, no, he's relieved - only suddenly much more leery towards what the rest of this mad interlude will entail. Murder made sense. He could understand this bastard and Talon too if this was only some cruel prelude to murdering him. Murdering for the sake of religious conviction, or personal jealousy, or even misdirected rage made perfect sense. This Fane though, and his penchant for torture for the sake of torture? Was this the lesson he had prated on of and if so, what was he supposed to learn? He's almost too tired, too hurt, and too drugged with sensation to care. Hanging here with an insane half-elf cupping his balls and kissing his softening, startled cock, Will briefly contemplates existence, and the future, and his face twists into a painful knot of frustrated, soundless tears. His expression is still tilted back to the ceiling, his grief as private as he can keep it. He madly wants to touch himself, to scrub Fane's spit and the white slick off his cock and out of his hair. He feels the fucker in every pore as he ascends, scuttling over his torso like a great insect. Will's clued in to the perverse satisfaction Fane gleans from any sign he's performing well, and tries not to shudder as those feminine fingers tickle over bruised flesh. They don't feel good against his sweaty, spent body. They don't. He's perfectly stiff beneath them, crackling with trepidation, only the occasional muscle jumping at his pecs or throat. The small voice in the back of his brain hints that now would be a good time for an insult or some whisper of further defiance, but he can't get it out. He's totally unprepared for the healing spell. Hardly unpleasant, it's a little like standing beneath a cataract of cold mist, passing from head to foot and leaving one warm and exhausted in its wake. It pulls him from his revery with the ceiling and he tilts his face back to earth, blinking dazed blue eyes at Fane, lips parted with an unvoiced question. He still doesn't know what to say so he doesn't say anything. The pinch of the first needle is illogical, as unexpected and senseless as the healing. What is this, poison? Is there some plague on it to slowly make him senseless? No, it just smarts. The second one smarts a little more. The third sets him to squirming, flinching away from Fane's expert hand even as the next needle is pulled from the pouch, then inexorably stabbed into his chest. "Stop it," he growls pathetically, watching the little path of pain's inevitable destination with mounting alarm. His brain's bobbing in a pool of puddled endorphins as the gold pin pierces the thin, sensitive flesh at the top of his nipple. It doesn't hurt as it should; the pain is a bell, the clapper striking the bronze with an initially cutting, harsh, and dischordant crash. Sonorously though, increasingly melodious, it ripples outwards, vibrating all the tiny bells of the needles above it. It bounces off the lash marks, the grating cut in his face, his nose, even the mangled mess of his left shoulder, and leaves Will's head buzzing. A senseless, whining exhalation trails from his throat. The room's a carousel of blood and colour, and his panting's adopted an edge more ragged than it was as he thrust into Fane's mouth. What a clarity suddenly, as though he could sit down with a small, inked brush and trace the line of every invisible vein beneath his skin. He shifts in the chains weakly, then sags, fingers twitching with pain. Fane's regarded a moment with new attentiveness and Will whispers, "God, you're ugly. S'no... s'no wonder ye have t'ch-chain a mman t'k-keep 'im." He grins miserably. Tue Feb 28, 2006 10:58 am -------------------------- Fane looks amused as Will stutters out his insults. He might be vain, but he also is confident. The paltry words are waved away with a flick of one hand. “You’re looking none the worst for the wear,” Fane drawls back. “I’m sure Paul will still be interested. Would you like me to bring him back in?” The tiny bells shifting on Will’s chest sing like a symphony to Fane’s ears. There are more pins in the leather pouch but he removes it and tosses it to the table. The half-elf frowns and he locks his hands behind his back, deep in thought. He stops occasional in his meditative state to stroke a finger down the rippled path the needles have made, or pull delicately at one, the end pricking his finger. He knows what that sensation does to a body. How it sets nerve-endings to a jangling scream that shoots straight from the chest through the entire body. He licks the tiny drop of blood from his finger. The wet stain on his trousers attests to how close Fane is to his limits. He steps behind the prisoner, his lean fingers going to the buttons of his trousers as he speaks. “You know what’s coming next,” he says, the buttons parting, and the pants slipping down his legs. Fane’s legs are marked with a design. Not tattoos but actual scars, white and raised in precise, elegant patterns. They cover his thighs, buttocks, and hips. A fox chases it's own tail at one spot. A tree. Leaves. A falcon in flight. The fierce claws of a tarnet wolf. They meld and glide around his legs like the picture book for the blind. His cock stands at stiff attention against his belly. A breath hisses from between his clenched teeth as he touches its sensitive head, spreading a bit of pre-cum down his shaft. His legs are as devoid of rough hair as the rest of his body. A tidy patch though, pale, trimmed, and fine, surrounds his groin and extends up a few inches towards his belly. In terms of length, he’d give Will a run for his money where the ladies are concern. “I will make this easy on you William. If you give me your word not to fight, I will make sure you don’t die from this.” He speaks of more then just the coming rape, but of Talon’s emanate arrival. “I do not want you dead, but the Redemptionist has a strong desire for it.” He steps from the black pants, as bare as Will now. “Or I can have Paul come in and rape you,” he continues, voice menacing. “He is not as gentle as I am.” Fane closes his hand on Will's manacled wrist. He brushes his fingers down that muscled arm and bulging bicep, across the wide sweep of strong back. He digs his strong fingers into Will’s buttocks, relentlessly pressing the flesh apart, thumbs pressing inward. “He will make you bleed and scream, and I will not heal you out of pure spite,” he hisses. “And you will die, broken and beaten.” He releases Will’s buttocks and flexes his hips. His cock, slick with cum, rides the groove of Will’s ass. His hand moves around to flatten Will’s soft cock against his own belly. “That William, is the first lesson I teach anyone that comes to me. What everything I've done here has been about. Even hanging in chains... Trapped. Helpless,” he breaths the words against Will’s back. “You have power over your situation.” The fingers of one hand beginning their relentless stroking again, while the other slowly pulls a pin from Will’s chest. “You have but to decide. You chose to fuck my hand and mouth. You chose to accept the pain of the needles. Now here is another choice to make." Last edited by wickediamond on Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:42 am; edited 1 time in total Tue Feb 28, 2006 1:58 pm -------------------------- "B-but ye ssssaid ye weren't plannin' t'kill me," the bartender protests hoarsely, swallowing hard and trying to turn and see what Fane's about - though he knows quite well. "Ye said it just. S-so that's what the Talon bloke's plannin' then? Wh-why isn't he here? Ye said he's late? I wager he's p-played yeh false'n has no... no intention've payin' ye at all. F-fuck around with old Silver a while 'n bloody all your tools and your room for nawt at all. This's pointless now, he's not goin' t'show at all and ye won't be p-paid." Will clenches his ass tighter than a schoolgirl's the moment Fane's fingers are below his belt, his chin dropping onto his chest and every muscle on his back coiled and bunched. "I didn't 'choose' to do those things," he hisses hatefully, feeling the poison dripping from his eyes - aye, 'tis poison and not tears. "You MADE me do 'em. I was a bloody jack, shitnob; ye think mates haven't reached inta me lap of a dark night three months away from the nearest dark twat? That's when I make me choice and I tell 'em t'fuckin' shove off. I'll fuckin' die and happy too afore I tell ye to bugger me like the mindless fuckin' dog ye are. DO it because I see ye want me and there's cock-all I can do about it - but I ain't goin' t'choose to GIVE you a d-damned thing." He gasps for air a few long seconds, and barks something like a laugh. "I see ye comin' in your trowse for me and that's why I know ye won't call Paul." Will turns, straining, breaking the clots in his left shoulder so he's glaring 'round at Fane behind a back slick with running blood. "Ye want me too BAD t'call Paul. Ain't that right? So who's the fuckin' victim now, shitnob?" He's dizzy. He drops his head and lets his eyes fall half-shut, so he can just barely see through a fringe of damp lashes Fane's hand grasping his sticky cock once again. "P-power over me situation," he comments listlessly, quietly, "S'what that is. Power over ye. M'father tried for a long time t'convince me he held me leash... but came a day I realised that he needed me. And then I'd won." Tue Feb 28, 2006 4:23 pm -------------------------- “Do you ever miss him,” Fane says at Will’s back. Aye, Will’s right. Fane won’t send for Paul, he wants Silver for himself to much, and a snarled, defiant acceptance is all the answer the sadist needs. He grasps his own cock and beginnings to press for entry. “You broke his hold over you, but in the end do you ever miss the moments when he was simple your father and not your master.” Fane pants the last word, sounding almost desperate. A strange conversation to be sure. “Breath out William,” he coaxes in a gentle voice. “It will go easier.” He spits into his free hand, and runs it over his shaft, even as he continues his inevitable invasion. “Fuck, relax,” he growls and a shudder runs through his body. “You did make the choice to give over to me William. Your mouth might have said no, but your body said yes.” He plants the ideas like poison among a flower garden. Every word that slips out of Fane is forgotten the second its spoken. He’s talking, but has no real understanding of what he’s saying. It is truth and words tumbling out to distract Will from what’s happening. To distract himself and keep from coming to early. All his concentration is focused on the point of his body where it’s entering Will. He wants in. He wants that hot, churning feeling in his gut to grow and explode inside this willful man. Fane reaches up and tangles his hand in Will’s head, jerking it back. “I can point you here,” he snaps and jerks Will’s head to look one way. “Or there,” he says as he directed Will’s head in another direction. “Abigail is like that. She needs it and hates it.” His fingers tightened in silver hair and around the base of Will’s cock as he slips deeper. A mirror to the feeling he is experiencing. A groan rumbles from his throat, and Fane looses sight of the room for a moment as starbursts rain down across his vision. His fingers slip away from Will’s hair, and his arm wraps around the bartender’s chest, pressing the two together, plucking at the needles like they’re piano keys. “But it’s only ever ways you’d be willing to go,” he says with malicious certainty. “You have freedom William, have had it from the second you walked it that door. But look at what its gotten you,” he says, voice low and rushing past Will’s ear. He presses a kiss to the side of Will’s neck, and then rests his forehead on that broad back. He meets the last resistance to the conclusion of his entry. His eyes are locked on the sight below him. He pulls at Will’s cock with his hand, even as he presses, and presses, and finally slips in. “You have become like me.” The words come out stifled and ends on a whispered, “Fuck!” The curse squeezes out of his lungs, and he bites the base of Will’s neck, his hips thrusting in a driving rhythm that shoots pleasure to his hard nipples and makes his legs weak. He growls around the piece of flesh in his mouth, and does not let up until he tastes blood. “Fucked Will. Like me,” he pants as his bloody mouth moves away. “Proper fucked.” Tue Feb 28, 2006 5:46 pm -------------------------- Will hasn't talked openly about his father in nearly five years - not once, not even to his best girls, his closest mates, or even Father Duane. He's forged an armour around the past in his head and hammered up inside of it everything to do with the Blades and his time in Valyne's Cathedral, the barracks, and his father's company. Private William Robinson Jr. was left somewhere thousands of miles from here and good riddance to the mealy-mouthed fool. But Fane's jammed a cock-shaped crowbar in the chinks of Silver's fine plate and rusted the maille beneath with blood and semen. The bartender's more tired and sore than he can ever remember being. The vitriol sprayed at his tormentor was pulled from some deep, cold resevoir and Will feels empty and spent now that he's used up the last of his reserves. He bleeds words. "Never was my father save in name," he grunts, squeezing his ass into a hot knot of resistance, "Saw 'im once a year 'til I was eleven, then mum kissed either side've me face good-bye and I went to live with 'im in the Blades' barracks. Gave me a partie, tried to bully Kildean and magick into me head, make me a knight. Good with the partisan still, forgot the magick, never much of a knight - celibacy n-never worked out." Why'd he say that. Fane's like a piston; like a broom handle; like a fucking bullet. Will grabs his chains and squeezes them for purchase, pulling himself up several inches to concentrate on the burn of his worn muscles and bleeding shoulder. He cackles suddenly at the ceiling, a mad sound. "Hope ye d-don't think, mate, that me father buggered me. N-nay. He was a Bishop, but not one've them sorts. Good man, in his w-way, but barkin' mad. B-but I-- I-- ah!" For one fraction of an instant he wearily relents the violent contraction of muscles and Fane expertly steals an inch, piercing upwards with a violent, desperate lunge. Will groans uncomfortably and his left leg jerks in its manacle, trying to jackknife backwards and kick Fane away. The half-elf's words ring with sick truth. Will's already responding to the diabolical hand between his legs before he can complain again about the difference between choices and coercion. No one with tits or otherwise else has ever gotten him off three times in ten minutes. What the fuck does that imply? He's swelling in Fane's fingers as obediently as Madacy's witless pitbull. The heat and the pull drag up his groin and the small of his back. Even his sore ass stops listening to him. There rises suddenly a burning, wet pain and Will's only clenching around Fane's cock, pleasuring an intruder instead of barring his entrance. His head's snapped back. The noises coming out of his throat are agonized, small things quietly dying in the corner. "Nnn-not willing," he moans, arching his back as Fane rides him bloodily. His hips rise to Fane's hand and flee from Fane's cock, a perverse game of hide and seek. He barely feels the bruised sting of the needles as they're molested. The pain of the half-elf's entry bursts anew with every lunge, dragging deep into him, deeper than anatomy, deep as his navel, as his breastbone, up to his heart and his throat 'til he wonders if he'll black out and wake up at God's feet, wringing his hands and trying to come up with an explanation. Then he's not wondering anything at all. Pleasure overtakes pain - no, pleasure and pain mingle. Neither disappears but a shaky communion is established, one complimenting the other. It's just as Fane had said earlier... the one made the other better. That realisation is perhaps worst of all, even worse than his helplessly rocking in Fane's strong hand and gasping needfully. Suddenly, his last shield's gone. He understands. He doesn't have long to dwell on it. Fane's thrusts crescendo, rattling the silver-haired man in the chains, grinding his wrist and ankles into the cutting manacles and tearing at his shoulder. He bludgeons soft tissue and violates a virgin passage. Agony mounts enormously, throbbing and burning throughout Will's simultaneously aroused body like a plague fever. He's bitten into like a piece of bread and can't stop himself from screaming. Tue Feb 28, 2006 9:15 pm -------------------------- Fane is falling apart to sounds. Will’s scream mingles with the bells. A tight-lipped groan is whirling in his own throat, and it bursts free every time he pushes deep into that untried passage. He’s got to be careful not to pull to far out, not to push to far in, not tear up this young man’s insides like they’re tissue paper. He can already feel blood and precum slicking that tight passage. Can see it when he pulls out. He’d been impatient. He’d not prepared Will properly. Should have used a lubricant. His fingers first. Fuck it all. Why is he still thinking about this? Just fuck. Just fuck! Fuck it all to hell. Just fuck Will and make the barkeep scream and cum in his hand. Will flutters like trapped butterfly wings, contractions squeeze Fane, delicate, strong, and erratic. The sadist growls, a noise pushed from deep within, the sound mixed with Will’s name. His whole focus narrows downward. “Ye--es yes yesyesyes,” he encourages, slowing his motions, letting Will do most of the work. Lets him wither on the chains, riding his cock and his hand. His orgasm tightens the muscles in his legs, pulls at his balls, makes his cock grow fuller. He’s close. So close. Blood is trickling down Will’s spine from where he’d nibbled. He wraps a hand around the spot. His chest becomes pink, his heart hammering blood into his cheeks and shoulders. His lips part and try to keep up the pretense of breathing. Fane looks alive. Sweat coats his body, a healthy glow invigorates his skin, even his eyes seem to burn with life. Will's cock is hard and heavy, trapped in his fist. He shudders in ecstasy at the weight of it. He is on fire, and then that heat, spread all over, drops like a rock, and he’s cumming in Will. He wraps both hands around the other man's hips, and locks them in place as he moves again. He shudders and shouts out his release. Watching all the while. He can’t tear his gaze away, and its only when the room bleeds to white that he blinks, expression crumbling with pleasure. His eyes shine with some inner vulnerability. He presses his chest to the bartender's back, head rested on Will’s shoulder, arms locked around his torso. His fingers play with Will’s wonderful cock as the last shudders move like gentle waves over his body, as he tries to find his breath, and calm the racing of his heart. There is a knock at the door, brief and rapid. Fane’s eyes flash to the iron bound tarnet, his arms move to embrace Will’s chest, tightening like steel bands, his hands splayed over Will's bloody torso. Possessive. The door is thrown open, and Paul and Talon step in. Fane stares at his lackey and the other man from across Will’s shoulder, eyes hard and hooded, expression fierce and rigid. Fane cups Will’s chin in a gentle hand, and turns his face away, into the barkeep’s own shoulder. An odd and protective gesture. As if by hiding Will’s eyes from them, he hides Will himself. Mayhap its to bare the vulnerable line of Will’s neck to Talon. Who can say but Fane himself. Paul’s expression is one of vicious arousal. His hands are shaking fists. Talon looks horrified, sick, and triumphant all at the same time. Like he wants to puke on the stone floor but not before punching Will in the face. He is covered in dust and looks to have just come from battle. Fane straightens to his full height, slipping out of Will. Blood and cum clings to his semi-hard cock. He places a hand over Will’s heart and squeezes. Then slips away and walks around the prisoner, standing before him. “You are late,” he reproaches Talon grimly, uncaring of his nudity or the state his body is in. Sweat and cum drip off him to add more stains to the floor. Talon jerks, as if broken out of a spell, and glares at Will, half visible around Fane. “I told you to castrate him, not fuck him,” he spits out. Wed Mar 01, 2006 3:58 am -------------------------- Only dimly does Will realise the very instigator of all this misery has entered the dungeon. The bartender's perception of reality is limited to two excruciating points, and not even Talon's dagger-sharp eyes or Paul's salacious leer can convince him that a whole world and an entirely different reality exist outside of them. Mad tales flutter in his head like bats taking advantage of the darkness; raunchy stories his mates used to tell of this friend of a friend who spent a night in a land brig and had to wear a cork up their arse for three months. Well, lookee 'ere, Elias: old Silver's become a friend of a friend. He's good with pain, generally. Breathe in steady through your nose, keep your head still, don't sick up, don't bite your tongue. This is a unique pain though, rare as Sharteshanian timber, and no prior experience with a mutilated arm or any requisite surgery prepares him for it. This, now, is an extravegant agony striking in waves, relenting only to redouble at every inhalation. With each predictable but still startling peak his lungs steal his voice and use it to moan or whimper in a way he doesn't recognise as belonging to him. Chasing up the small of his back like a fuse the fire burns into his balls, lances through his groin, and makes fists in his abdomen, bruised, raw, and fiery like whiskey poured on opened flesh. That would be Fane's cum, he supposes numbly. Ticklish liquid lines of it run down the backs of his legs, teasing him with a few last whispers of shameful pleasure. The discomfort of his unsatisfied erection, however, has nothing on the torment spasming up his back and stomach, and that's almost funny, because he didn't think there was anything else worse. He's learning all sorts of things today. Like, for instance, how a certain gentle caress can feel more violating than a cock up the ass. Fane's touch has no right to be so tender. Why can't he play this according to type? He should leave Will alone to rise and fall in the manacles as he piles air into his burning lungs, tumbling obliviously along in a cyclical, ceaseless tide of agony like a bit of flotsam rolling in the surf. The bartender doesn't have the strength to bite at the digits against his jaw. His head turns obediently. He watches blood dribble down the insides of his eyelids, scattering into fractal blooms like ink droplets dissipating into water. His backside must look a mess. The thought makes his stomach turn. Talon sounds a prick, don't he. Will doesn't need to open his eyes to get an image of him: self-righteous lunatic, ugly as a nun's arse, pock-marked, nose like a wad of old cheese, smells like goat. He'd probably recognise him from the Whale if he cared to open his eyes and pretend he gave a damn about the filthy bugger's existance - but he doesn't. He hangs in the manacles limp as a corpse, panting like a horse, his voice catching with every breath like a fucking woman's. And then an awful word snags between his ears and he jerks to attention with a strangled noise of protest. "Nn-no!" Wed Mar 01, 2006 11:12 am -------------------------- Fane braces his feet apart, his chin jutting out, as he locks his hands behind his back. He looks like a commander upon his chosen battlefield. “I’m afraid our arrangement has changed,” he replies, voice returning to its usual deep, smooth cadence. He hates the feeling that churns in his chest at Will’s vulnerable voice. The man has sunk some bright part into his being, and he can feel it growing and spreading like a malignant cancer, eating away at his steely resolve and strength. Fane can not afford to luxuriate in sweet feelings and tender thoughts. Abby has already chipped away parts of the wall he houses his soul and heart in, slipping her bright little fingers in. He does not know what he would do if Silver found that he had made a similar chinch. Fane suspects that when Will is a little stronger, his rage at what Fane has done will be terrible. There is little chance of them ever continuing in an amenable relationship. At best, they will get in spitting distance before they must try to kill each other, or be killed in return. A flush spreads up Talon’s face in a tide of scarlet rage. “Then I want him dead,” he screams, spittle and hate flying out with the words. “Fucking Iocan whore. I’ll kill him myself,” and his hand is already pulling at the sword at his side. Fane is suddenly there in front of the Redemptionist, hand clamped like a iron band around Talon’s wrist. “Do not draw that in here,” he hisses in the other man’s face. Talon yanks at the bruising grip, struggling to step away from Fane’s gore splashed body. Horror at the smell of blood and sex is blooming over his callow face, as Fane relentlessly pushes the sword back into its sheath. A measure of his pride and zeal comes back. He is a Redemptionist! To hell with this two-bit flesh peddler. “I-I’ll have this place burned to the ground.” Talon bridles in Fane’s face as he releases him. “The Eye will come slaughter every last one of you and then burn this Twin’s defiling house straight down to TAWHOQUE.” Fane's expression shifts, until he looks thunderous and menacing. “You will have to get out of here first Eyeball,” he counters silkily. “My friend’s know where I’ve gone and what to do if I don’t come back.” Talon says the words with nasty glee. His face is repulsive in his triumph. “I want him dead if you will not give me his manhood.” Fane looks into the Redemptionists eyes and then smiles. “I call your bluff fool.” The sadist has a good poker face, but he is not entirely sure if the Redemptionists would stay away from his House. They might not come in broad daylight, but there is always night, and there are men that Talon could hire to carry out the deed for him. Talon himself could come one night and destroy all he’d worked to build. There are to many variables, and the Eye is mad enough to try and burn down the whole of the Cove if worked into a proper lather. The zealot before him seems more then capable of starting a furor over something as simple as an Iocan’s unchopped cock. Religious fools have been worked up over less. The blood drains from Talon’s face and he looks towards the door, but Paul and Tyler stand there, beefy arms crossed over their chests. “The Eye would never come into the Cove for one lone Brother too stupid to know better then to mess with its people.” Fane continues his own bluff, then sighs, and shakes his head. “Is the job not well done,” he asks in bewilderment, waving a hand towards Will as if he’s discussion a piece of artwork and not a man. “I have met all you’re requirements except the one. He is well beaten.” Fane means it in the physical sense. Will's last defiant words still ring in his ears, and a smile plays on his lips with the thought, even as he mourns the coming lose of a well matched man. Paul is a dog who licks his boot, but Will would fight him at every turn. It would be delicious, and one day the balance would shift between them, and be even sweeter because of what came before. All of that is a fantasy for Fane. He knows that is likely to never happen. Talon looks at the mangled thing hanging in the chains, away, and then back again, taking in what Fane has done for the first time. “You were to cut off his cock,” Talon growls stubbornly. Fane purses his mouth and makes an indolent noise of displeasure. He paces back and forth between Will and Talon. Then stops in front of Will, and begins to pull the needles from Will’s chest. They ping softly as they hit the stone floor, the belled one making a tinny sound. The last one, the gold one, he removes with gentle care, before threading it with a small hiss and barely a blink into his own nipple. It bleeds. Fane wants to finish off Will's still hard cock, but does not wish to entertain this roughneck company. “You want your pound of flesh,” he says casually over his shoulder to the Eye. Talon’s face twists and he swallows like he’s tasted something bitter. “Yes,” he bites the word off. Fane meets Will’s eyes, and he does not bother to hide the weariness and defeat that flutters across his features. “Then let us begin the bargaining,” he replies. Ever the accomplished actor, he makes the words sound merry. Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:00 pm -------------------------- And how is he meant to interpret fucking any of this?! What does the hangdog expression mean, shitnob? It's worse, worse, one-thousand times worse to be defended and bloody coddled by this sack of offal! Will feels pain becoming repulsion and repulsion becoming anger, deep and purple-scarlet in his belly. It isn't supernatural enough to cull anymore adrenaline out of him or convince his battered body to raise a holy hell, but it's something to put in his teeth and clamp down on, like the bit of wood they gave him when they sawed off his arm. Fane can go fuck himself and finish off with snivelling Paul over there when he's done; Will isn't counting on him for bullshit. Should he be grateful now? Oh, thank you, magnanimous shitnob, for havin' the decency not to guillotine me about the crotch! Such charity! Fuckin' saint! A bloody lip's curled at Talon. Silver sounds drunk, and far too hurt to give a damn about the way the Redemptionist is looking at him. Ain't he ever seen someone ridden hard and hung up wet before? "...I 'member ye," he sneers, "Can't... ffffuckin' 'old yer liquor. Tip for shit. Listen t'the poof here or Paul'l put it in your eye. Big... b-bad Geffie Eyeball bein' told what t'do with yer sword... bloody... b-bloody stings, dunnit." Far above his gently lolling silver head, his wooden fingers are twitched experimentally. He's no idea how the arm's still functioning perfectly when the base has been so fouled with blood, but his insensate digits make a nice rasping sound against the manacles binding his opposite wrist, alerting their owner to their regular old mechanical precision. The ancient artificer had lectured a while about nerve bindings and hidden runes and something about like-to-like or two-for-one or tit-for-tat or whatever. Hadn't really listened. His granddaughter had been scraping a whaleboat in her brother's wet workshirt and he'd had a hard time not staring out the window, fantasizing. Anyway, thank God for small favours. If he can just eeeease the darbie 'round his right wrist with enough pressure from his false hand, he can maaaybe tuck in his thumb and slide it free. Then... Saints, what then? Well, he'd think about that later, when there was less talk about removing his nob, and his ass stopped clenching in agonizing convulsions, and his nose stopped aching, and he could think a little clearer. He tilts his head back, leaving Talon and Fane to kiss each other's rumps or set up a poker table beneath the bartender's throbbing cock and lay it in the centre as the pot in a few hands of cards. Fuck 'em. Will's getting out of here. Fuck this. He thins his sweaty eyes, squinting through a hazy blur with as much subterfuge as a dog trying for a sandwich left too near the table's edge. His wooden hand's wedged painfully under the jagged metal bracelet beside it and he pushes up, breath quickening with pain. His arm may be a thaumaturgical wonder but the pins hurt like fuck all dragging through skin and bone. He can't even hear the noises he's making. Wed Mar 01, 2006 12:52 pm -------------------------- Fane crosses the room to flop back down onto the wooden chair. He rests an arm on the table and regards Talon with lazy disinterest. “Abigial,” he calls, and the nude girl appears in the doorway. “Yes Fane?” she asks, hands modestly clasped before her. “Something to drink if you please,” he requests. Talon shifts and fidgets impatiently through this little exchange. “Can we get on with it,” he snarls. Fane nods and gestures with a hand. “So what will it be,” he says. “His eyes,” Talon says immediately. Fane peers at the Redemptionist from beneath coy lashes. His smile is flirtatious. “But they’re so pretty,” he pouts. Talon looks at Fane in disgust, and then at Will, eyes alight with a new idea. His smile is vicious and triumphant. “His arm,” he breaths. Fane’s eyebrows popup in surprise and he looks at the bartender. A frown tugs at his lips as he watches Will trying to slip out of the shackles. “The real one?” he asks incredulously. “That’s do damn much work.” “No,” Talon says. “Not the real one.” Fane lowers his brows, a finger tapping at his lower lip in contemplative silence. Abby appears in the door with a pitcher and glasses. The tension in the room is blatant. She edges in and places it on the table. Her fingers tremble as she pours the water. “No,” Fane snaps, breaking the silence like a whip crack. Abby jumps and water sloshes over the table. “Pick something else.” Talon makes a noise of disgust and turns away. “You’re trying to stall or make me change my mind,” he says to the wall. “No no,” Fane denies. “But I’m sure we can come to a mutual agreement.” There is silence in the room, Fane watches Talon’s back, and the sounds of Will trying to slip his binding are the only sound. The pained noises he’s making drive into Fane like sweet knives. “The skin from his back.” Talon’s voice is harsh and cruel. “I want to display it on my wall.” Fane picks up one of the scalpels still sitting on the table and looks at it gleaming edge in the light. In his mind he’s weighing one pain against another. The arm would have been a better mercy. At least the bartender could have bought another one. Well, if he’s careful there was a good chance that Will can survive. He had rejected the arm feeling that it would be a greater humiliation for Will. Stupid of him to try and spare the man his dignity. Now he almost wishes he could take the words back. The sooner Will Silver is gone the better for him. This situation is growing uncontrollable. “Done,” Fane agrees. He’s on his feet and moving across the room in the blink of an eye. Fane’s practiced and nimble hands bat at Will’s. “Stop that,” he mutters in irritation. “You’ll end up dislocating your thumb.” “Everyone out but Abigail,” he says in quiet command. Talon opens his mouth to protest, but the look he receives from Fane has him slinking for the door. It closes with a finality behind the small group. “Tighten the lines.” Abby actives the levers, and Will is pulled even further to his limits, there is no wiggle room now. She approaches on shaking legs and places a hand on Will’s blood-smeared buttocks. “You hurt him,” she sighs. She sounds like she wishes it had been her, and not her, but most of all she sounds like Will’s pain is cutting out her heart. “And I will have to hurt him more my sweet,” Fane says with dour resolution. He crosses the room and retrieves a scalpel, what looks like a fork with its tines bent, thinned, and cut off flat, and a vial. He stops, holding the instruments in his hand, and meets Will’s eyes. “I want you to take this,” he says flatly, holding up the vial. “It will numb the pain.” He hands it to Abby to administer if the barkeeper is smart. Fane moves behind Will and looks at the lines of his back. He closes his eyes, taking a deep breath, and then makes a rude noise. If he was about to do this awful thing, mar this beautiful canvas, he should at least leave a mark that is not as repulsive. Then with swift sure strokes he etches his house’s symbol in the back part of Will’s bicep. More pain to be sure, but what else does Fane know. It is the same pattern that adorns his legs and Abby’s chest. A simple aspen leaf, a most unusual symbol. The tree itself is said to be used to commune with the otherworld - demons in particular and is used for protection against the forces of darkness. It raises interesting questions about the man who wears it. He takes his time to finish the task, making sure to carve in the fine details of veins and leaf edges. Then he puts his hand over the whole bleeding mess and heals it, causing the skin cells to over do the job, so that it becomes a neat, but raised, visible scar. He feels a small amount of satisfaction seeing his mark carved on Will's arm. He extends his senses outward from there, finding the mess he’s made of Will’s bowels. He curses, a personal flogging for his impatience, and heals the delicate tissue with particular care. Fane is a collector of pains. He gives it out and receives it with equal acceptance, but he cannot stand careless disregarded and ham-fisted handling. He’s done something that he’s always careful to avoid. To rape a person is a monstrous task. It is domination of a delicate kind, where one has to find the breaking point of a person, but not pass it. Press it yes, but not shatter. He only hopes that he has not broken Will as badly as he has his flesh. He then moves on, deadening nerve endings and slowing the blood flow in Will’s back. It will still bleed and hurt some, but when his manipulations wear off it will be a thousand times worst. Hopefully by then, Fane will have healed him. It's a bit startling to realize he'd planned to do that all along. He marks the lines mentally in his mind where he needs to cut. It looks like the pattern a tailor would use to cut out a shirt. “Abigail I will need your help.” Her eyes widen. “Cloth Abby,” he says patiently and she rushes to retrieve the requested item. He opens his mouth, the words trembling on his lips. Then they are falling out. “If I do not do this I risk everything. I will see you healed the moment Talon leaves. I just…” he stops voice becoming gruff, and grits his teeth. There is not much else to say. He wraps an immobilization spell around Will and then begins his bloody work. Fane makes a hobby of medicine because of his ability to heal and a natural curiosity. He has dissected corpses down to the bone. At this moment though, perspirations breaks out along his upper lip. He keeps the knife steady. Blood leaks down in tiny tears that Abby blots away with the cloth. When it is finished, Will’s back is etched with red lines. Fane takes the other instrument in his hand, giving the knife to Abby, and begins to peel the skin away, starting at the top. It is best to skin a body when its still warm. Skin, living skin, is a tough, resilient hide that clings to fat and muscle. The task starts out difficult, getting the edge loose enough to get a good grip is a struggle. His fingers are slick with blood, even with the spell he worked. And then, its like peeling a grape. It comes free with a wet, tearing sound. Fane changes his mind right after he starts to pull on the right side, and makes cuts necessary to spare the area over Will’s spine. Bone usually makes for difficulties, and something stops Fane from exposing that delicate area. Other then that, he steps back, and a long strip of flesh dangles from his fingers. He folds it like cloth, and hands it to Abby. She looks white, and about to pass out, but she hurries to the table to put it there. He finishes the job while she is across the room, and hands her the second piece without a word. The sadist stares at the flesh laid bare before him with an expression of revulsion and fascination. He can see white fat, the spread of tiny veins. Fane cuts, burns, pierces, beats, and bruises flesh on a daily basis. He pushes bodies to their limits all the time, but even this is going further then he's ever gone. Had he ever even intended to castrated Will when he took the job? Not really. “Take it too him,” he rasps hoarsely. Abby bundles the stripes into a black cloth and hurries out the door, closing it behind her as she leaves. Fane’s hands tremble and fumble as he reaches up and release the manacles. He lowers Will gently to the floor, removing the immobilization spell. “Will?” he calls, panic in his voice. He kneels beside the bartender and places fingers on the unmarred skin that covers Will’s spine. He takes a deep breath, his heart already hammering, and closes his eyes. In moments it feels like he’s shoving healing energy into a burst dam. It floods out of him in a torrent, rushing to work, but still more rolls after. His heart batters against his chest like a trapped thing, and it feels close to exploding. He’s already done so much today, but this has to be finished. He watches scar tissue form over exposed flesh, using his own reserves of life to save Will’s body the grueling effort. Patches of rough, angry, red skin grow before his eyes, and still he pushes. It's slopping out messily now though, out of his control. His hand rests fully on Will’s back now, the only thing holding him up. The room is going dark around the edges and he can barely catch his breath. He can’t stop. As everything goes dark, his last thought centers on one thing. Heal. How very odd for a man in his line of work. The door cracks open, and Paul peeks in. -------------------------- The conversation between Fane and Talon was something going on in another room; another world; another dimension. He knew neither of the voices as much save unimportant chattering, as the din of the supper crowd in the pub was of an evening he was otherwise occupied chatting up Reggie about the superiority of Alderode navymen to those chuffs of Sharteshane, or trying to convince Tabitha her fellow was a lout and she ought to poison his beer. Talon sounded a bit like a malfunction actually: squeaky shutter, wobbly chair, Sette Frummagem's blustering, pointless ability to make words. Fane seemed the vagrant north wind in the naked elms behind the Whale; the murmur of the breakers or the gentle purring of one of Lea's quillcats. So nothing important, at all. Background noise. Dismissable. Maybe he thought he heard something about his eyes or his arm, but he sometimes thought he heard gossip in the Whale from the Redemptionists or thieves that he knew he ought to pretend he hadn't heard at all. This was the same. Ghost whispers. Inane chitchat. "Skin from his back," he hears but doesn't hear. Nay, he's just a stupid sleepy bartender too crippled to sail and too braindead for a real job. Blokes want to talk drunk over wine and fish though Master Stubbs is ready to call the watch in to clear the belly for the night? Well, no skin off Silver's back, they want to start a row. He's just too crippled to work the lines. Too braindead to be a mate or read the charts. Too crippled to squeeze his hand out of a cuff, too. He comes close towards the end, his tearstreaked cheeks afire with exertion, his eyes slitted to wet crescents, a dry keening creeping from his lips as he strains, but a grating of the delicate bones of his wrist pulls him up sharp. Then Fane's there scolding him and he has to look down again and sag in the chains defeatedly, all a'shiver and sweat-sodden. For a moment he meets Talon's eyes, willing sparks and fire to break out between them, but it's hard to be defiant and savoir faire when so tired with hurt, so naked, and so - as Fane had put it - proper fucked. All he can do is grin with his blood-fouled teeth and unnerve the Redemptionist into quickening his retreat. Will was more interested in the beverage on the table behind him, anyway. He's so thirsty he could give Reggie a run for his money. The door shuts behind Talon. The chains grow taut and bullying. Will groans unashamedly and closes his eyes against Abby's carouselling countenance, so deceitfully beautiful. He feels as though he could shit his stomach; mangled organs and intestine dropping out of him in a steaming heap of black and red, stringy with Fane's stinging cum. Something tears wetly in his shoulder and bicep. Even parallel his left arm reaches two inches higher than his right. A brass pin snaps from the bone and tumbles unobtrusively into his hair. "No," he tells the scalpel, shaking his head against the surgical gleam in Fane's white hand, "Did nawt t'him. I did nawt t'him. Did ye tell him I've ink on me shoulder? He'd n-not want moulten ink on a prize, would he?" Oh, but of course he would. A bit of blasphemy hung on his wall, defeated, pinned, preserved like a lion's roaring head to serve as a story to his mates and an aphrodesiac to his women. Will despairs. He drinks the bitter liquid Abby puts to his lips. It tastes of laudanum, the poppies uncut by quinine, sugar, or liquor. His churning stomach nearly spits it back up at Fane's favoured lady but the warm weight remains, making him think of long lazy nights in Lucja's cabin, leisurely sampling everything out of the little medicine cask they'd nicked from the scuttled Kenyon. He looks back to reality and the scalpel's disappeared. "Fane," he whispers in horror, not daring to turn; not thinking he could. "Don't throw me... in the Bay. Master Stubbs at the Whale will see it d-done right." The aspen leaf then, and he can almost see it as it's cut, the angles a vibrant scarlet hovering somewhere in the air of the room. He trembles around Fane's blade, waiting for the real cutting, weary of this pre-show, willing the laudanum to rise up his spine and make him not give a shit about any of this anymore. He knows he'll scream and Fane'll get off on it. The bitch Abby too. He'll have to watch them rutting on the floor like dogs as he hangs here and bleeds to death-- The unexpected healing makes him laugh. His fingers flex above him, jabbing idly through the chain links. "The hell's wrong with ye?" he whispers, "Afraid I'll bl-black out? That's good... That's real good." He's never been good with magic. Fane's healing becomes something else, hopscotching from pore to pore like thirsty mosquitos, making his skin clammy and his sweat cold. Maybe that's the drug. Maybe that's shock... He doesn't know the words, or the gestures. It's different in Sharteshane anyway. Not like home, where there are so many laws and so many ways to kill yourself by cocking up delicate fricatives or declining your nouns backwards. His first instructor had a story about a... a... "Risk everythin'," he parrots Fane in a slur, "Stupid git... why... take the job... then? You're... no good at this, mate." It was right senseless, really. Will for instance knew he'd be no good at all torturing people for money. He'd be worse at it then Fane even. Fane could at least get through the trickiest bits, but Will's conscience would be stinging far, far prior to the removal of clothes. No, he couldn't have even dragged his mark away from those steamships. Didn't see a lot of steamships in Tawhoque Bay. Right cruel to deny a fellow a rare spectacle after an unfortunate clunk on the head. Someone makes a noise in his ear - a soft, plaintive moan in time with a pressure and a pain somewhere behind him. It's an irritating noise. He's trying to follow the path of the pain, curious road that it is, round and wide, ensnaring him in scarlet twine... "Hey, Fane," he says muzzily a hundred years later, opening his eyes and watching the floor gyre gently, far away and soiled, "Not the... job for ye... I think. Not the job..." The gob with the cat in his throat interrupts him, and a painful inhalation fouls the gradual slowing of his breaths. His back arches until he's sure it'll snap at the small part, leaving him hanging in two separate pieces, like a dress shoppe mannequin - until he opens his eyes and sees he hasn't moved at all. The moaner's a screamer now as Fane sloughs the flesh off his shoulderblades. He's full of wasps. They're in his fingers and his joints. One-thousand wee stingers tap a venomous dance, stunning him unto paralysis. Will waits impatiently for a break in which to raggedly opine, "W-ickedness don't... sssit well with ssssome, I- I- I..." It's impossible to speak through sobbing when the agony starts to shriek and scream again. He can't get enough air for polite conversation anyway. He'll just shut his eyes a while. Only when a pale figure is laying beside him and the floor is cool and delicious against his cheek, does Will think to part his sandpaper eyelids and see what new colours the world's devised in his absence. The white face is close, drawn, pale as alabaster with a brow like bleached bone. Will moves his dark knuckles against it tentatively, sampling a new texture. It's like cool butter. He hurts and he is very, very thirsty but waking the man on the floor and asking that something be done about all this seems to be as barbaric a thing as tipping a ceramic off a pedastal or slashing an oil on a sitting room wall. The man looks exhausted, laid low after doing something he probably didn't want to do. Silver lets him sleep. Meanwhile, it's time to get up and get moving. Somehow he's on his belly. There's an awful pain where he lost his arm - strange too, as he'd thought that had healed up - and something's wrong with his back. Right arm's good though; weighs five-hundred pounds, numb as stone, but levered beneath him easily, if clumsily. He teeters on his bare ass a moment, then throws up very violently. The instincts of a talented hangover survivor keep him from toppling into the puddle as his arm gives out, sending him back to the cold ground in a miserable, confounded heap. He groans, succinctly, then cries out a little as the muscles flex beneath the raw, thin skin around his spine. It feels - just a bit - as though he's been spreadeagled and beaten with a cat o'nine. His flesh hand goes to his throat and holds the little rood there. The familiar words come to his bloodless lips - even rendered unlovely and unloveable, tenderness - frustrated - does not wither. Always kind, the floor accepts his brow and he leans into the anchor as the world spins madly around him. Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:07 am -------------------------- He takes the black cloth with an expression of glee, even as his cheeks go white. He can’t see the blood, it’s a good reason to have dark fabric handy, hides a mess, but he feels its wetness. Talon cradles his prize, sneers at the naked bitch and the three goons, "My compliments to your Master." Then is gone. Paul stands with his back braced against the other door, a foot resting on it, and his arms crossed. He glares at Abby and then pushes off to approach her. He moves like a large cat stalking prey. As he comes within arms length, she presses to the wall at her back, flinching when he puts his hands on the stone above her head. “Is he dead,” Paul questions the girl, his face dipping down to kiss at the line of her throat. She makes a distressed noise and looks towards Tyler and Danny, but they remain still. They know their role here at Fane’s. How the pecking order goes, and right now Paul is above them on the roster. Abby too, and to interfere in their interactions would be a bad idea. “Who,” she avoids the question and withers on the wall. Her eyes are widening, growing luminous, scared, and pained. Arousal colors her cheeks pink and her nipples tighten as Paul places more kisses on her skin. He has to mean Will, but could he mean Fane? It is a chilling thought. “The moulten,” Paul growls and pushes away from the girl and shoves open the door, no longer patient or willing to wait for an answer. “Paul no! Wait!” Abby says at his back and holds out a hand. He looks in the room, and a grin tugs at the corner of his lips at what he sees. “Why, that bloody fool healed him,” he scoffs and walks into the room with a deliberately loud tread. He looks at Fane’s naked, prone body and smirks. He is not concerned with Fane. The bartender is there, huddling on his knees by a puddle of puke that's making its way down the sloped floor. Abby rushes to Fane’s side, her hand laid to his brow, worry evident on her face. Paul walks up to Will, his boots nudging at the crown of silver hair. It’s matted now, dark, salty, and oily. More a pewter then a silver. Will Pewter. Doesn’t have quite the ring of the other. Paul laughs at his own joke. “Well, I see you survived,” Paul says casually, his eyes fix on the thin skin that’s grown over Will’s back. It looks like tissue paper. Tiny veins wiggle and worm out to the new skin, called by Fane’s power. They pulse just beneath its tender surface. He nudges the side of Will’s head with his boot. “How about you get up and we’ll finish what we started,” he growls, rolling his shoulders where the wounds still throb. Fane had not taken the time to heal him. “You know, if a fucking Eyeball gets the skin off you’r back just for fucking some bitch he was hot after.” He leans down, grasps Will’s wooden arm in hard hands, and starts to pull and rotate it backwards, stepping to Will’s left. “Then I should at least get the limb that tore these fucking holes in my back.” He looks up and jerks his chin at Tyler and Danny. A silent command to come help. They move into the room, and towards the two men. Paul continues to twist and raise the arm, planning to simple rip the wood from Will's arm. Abby kneels by Fane’s side, a hand covering her mouth, trying to hold in the noise that’s slipping out, while the other remains pressed to Fane’s chest. She looks down at Fane’s still features, wishing he'd wake up, but he lies there, cold and unmoving. Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:02 am -------------------------- Paul's voice is sort've familiar. It makes funny pictures in the bartender's head anyway: surreal half images of blood-smeared cocks and this elf with moon-white hair and skin. "Paul!" he croaks at last in muted triumph. Aye, he was jumped near the Cove by a big fellow calling himself Paul. The Rachshanians were causing shit over the wall, too. Something about an earthquake. Nevra had been by the fountain with those creepy bints she worked for, being a bitch to him aaaaas usual. There's more to it, but he lets it crouch somewhere out of the way, and tries to get on his feet so he won't feel so damned helpless. The Paul fellow is prating on senselessly of something as the bartender fumbles with his limbs. He starts twisting Will's arm and someone else takes over. Will twists with him, snarling in pain and bristling like a cat. His flesh hand drops from the bit of silver at his throat, bracing him on the slick floor a moment - no, not bracing him but pushing off the ground for momentum enough to haul his heavy arm up to Paul's trousers and dig into his crotch. He gouges his strong fingers into shaft and scrotum and does some twisting of his own. His ministrations are not as gentle as Fane's. Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:17 am -------------------------- He floats in a dark nothingness, and welcomes the absence of pain, thought, emotion, and everything else that has felt like such a burden moments before. It is calm here. Empty. Peaceful. He basks in wonderful nothingness. And then like all good things, it comes to an end. It starts with an echo of words. Not the job for him… Fane frowns in his misty peaceful nothing at that intrusive thought. Well of course he is the man for the job. Who is better suited to such a task? He lives for the torment of others, does not shy from pain, or employing delightful methods of coercion. Damnit! He is a ruthless bastard that makes people cry! He’d made Will cry. That thought tugs him a little closer to consciousness. It had been a very sweet sound. Now that the moment has past Fane can take a minute to catalogue his experience. The screams drawn from the barkeep during the skinning had been sublime and like nothing he’d heard before. That had been to extreme though. Smaller pieces would be better. Just a little torment. Wicked indeed. Taking limbs and other… important parts… that’s a bit much too. Break a bone. Bruise a body. Not so big a deal. The body heals from these pains. Kill a person? Well, what are a couple bodies buried out back in the end. If its for his betterment, all the more reason to have it done. He supposes that he thought he was going to talk Talon out of it in the end. Not the beating part, but the other thing. It’s the last time he’ll ever deal with a Redemptionist. At least his normal clients are controllable through blackmail. A learning experience to be sure. Will Robinson is not a lesson he’ll soon forget. Sentimental. What foolishness and stupidity. And all over a pair of pretty blue eyes, and a handsome face. Not to mention that body and his… Fane is tugged closer to wakefulness, but his body is still trying to find its equilibrium after the massive dose of energy he’d expelled. He moans a little, and shifts on the cold stone. Abby moves his head into her lap, trying to protect him as Paul screams in pain, bucking away from Will’s hand, and then kicks a booted foot into the bartender’s chest. Tyler and Danny rush forward to get a grip on Will’s arms and haul him off the Paul. But not before Paul catches a glimpse of the aspen scored into Will’s flesh. The motherfucker had even given him the mark! Jealousy burns like black pitch in Paul’s guts, fueling his rage. It had been months before Fane had even mentioned the symbol to him. That he had graced this--this commoner with the privilege after one session! It made him want to claw the thing from his own skin, kill Fane, kill Will, or hell maybe both. “Son of a Bitch!” he rasps bent over, hands clamped over tender, abused flesh. His eyes dart between Fane’s prone form and Will, so that you can’t be sure who he is addressing the profanity to. Abby curls around Fane like a living shield, her gaze chilly, mouth twisting in a tiny bow of warning. She reaches out and grasps the knife Fane had dropped when he'd released Will. "Do not fuck with this," her entire body says. “I’m going to make you fucking scream,” he wheezes and stumbles to the table. This he directs at Will. “Stop playing around and hold him,” he shrills at the guards. His voice has none of the smooth elegance that Fane's has and the charm from before is long gone. Paul rummages through the boxs with desperation, pulling instruments, bits of leather, and harness out. He tosses them on the table willy nilly. “Here,” he crows in triumph, and turns, a large, flat-ended blade in his hand. The edge is a jagged nightmare. “Now I’ll play Fane,” he spits. “And do a little doctoring. Maybe I’ll even fuck you after, and he can wake up to me banging the shit out of you.” He closes the space between them, his hand closing on the bulge of his sore groin. “You think Fane was bad, wait until you get a load of me.” He delivers a kick with the last word, aiming straight for Will’s side. Last edited by wickediamond on Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:48 pm; edited 1 time in total Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:30 pm -------------------------- Paul's package seems to hold all the answers, for as soon as Will's trying to yank it off him through the crotch of his pants, the disparate shards of horror in his head jump him and become one cohesive memory of the shit that's gone down in the last hour. It isn't terribly upsetting though. Feels like it's happening to someone else. And what a fucking nightmare it is. That's exactly what it seems like too: a surreal hodge-podge of pulp fiction, horror stories from dogwatches with mates who always loved to turn him green, and sexual frustration. He needn't pinch himself to prove this is all real though. The pain's technicolour evidence; ubiquitous, maddening, unable to decide what it wants him to obsess over the most; jumping from scene to scene erratically, like a poor director. Fane looks to have fainted and that bitch Abby is clutching him in a perfect fucking Pieta parody, the wretch. Will processes the scene languidly once Paul's shrieked and pulled himself off his clawing hand, leaving the bartender to stumble forward and catch himself on his palm and knees. The boot to his chest tips him over and knocks the wind out of him. It reverberates through his torso and makes his shoulders scream. He can't do anything for a moment save arch his back, tuck his elbow against his throbbing ribs, and grimace around grit teeth. Then he's smirking to rival Paul's, despair in it, agony, and a rising, half-mad, detached amusement. He finds breath enough to wheeze, "D-dilemma, shithook? S-ssome distress?" Fane's blearily regarded when some uncharacteristically weak sound escapes him, the bartender's mirth dying. He doesn't want to be in the same room as these sick bastards. He should strangle Fane though. He really should. He imagines his bloody hands closing around that white neck even as Paul contemplates the same and lonely Abby makes friends with the forgotten knife-- The two brutes have him before he can so much as twitch purposefully forward, their hands like wet sand packed into steerhide workgloves. Will hangs off Tyler like a piece of dirty laundry, his thought processes fluffy and drugged. "Hoi!" he barks at Paul's back, "Cocksucker. This... fuckin' farce is done. All done. The Redemptionist's gone. Ye missed out on stickin' it in poor Will. Shitnob 'ere on the floor - King Shitnob, pardon, lord'n master've this maaad 'n hazardous 'stablishment - healed me so I can leave now. No more've this. I can leave 'n ye best let me." Will wonders if he wouldn't have better luck reasoning with a rabid wolf. The sight of the blade pierces his laudanum-soaked brain and he shrinks away from it, jerking backwards into Tyler's burly chest. The carnal threat soundly unhinges him. He can almost feel his frightened cock curling shyly into his pelvis and only recently healed asshole puckering. He doubts Paul would heal him, even if it was only to keep him conscious as he tortured him further. "I can leave!" he hollers above the crack of a rib against Paul's boot, repeating the words over and over like a magic spell. "It's done'n I can leave!" Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:40 pm -------------------------- “Did you hear that?” Paul says, and cups a hand around his ear, looking at the occupants through mad, brightened, reddening eyes. “Thatmewlingnoise,” he cracks out, the words rushing together. “Seems the chum scrubber says that he was told he could go.” He flings his hands out. “I heard no order to let you go, you tar-footed, pier-queer!” he shouts, his voice echoing around the room. “Faaane…”he coos. “What’s the verdict! Fane?” Paul looks at the man laying on the floor and then shrugs, hands flying upward, the knife flashing, a crackling laughter spilling from his frantically grinning mouth. “He doesn’t appear to be in!” The laughter rolls on, his hands coming up to cradle his sides. “Looks like--," he gasps with chuckles. “We still--," another gasp, “have some time together.” Tyler and Danny look from Abby to Paul, their eyes wide and skittish. Even Abby is looking just plain terrified now. She is shaking Fane’s shoulder. All three recognize the signs. Paul has been upstairs junking on something else, and by the looks of things its not reacting well with the drugs already in his system. It isn’t the first time Paul has gone wacky crackers, but Fane is usually around to contain the situation. Top that with some personal vendetta he seems to have against Will, and Paul should be the one dangling in the chains right now. For everyone’s safety. So why isn’t he? It’s a major flaw in Fane’s organization. Paul has stood as second for a long time, slipping further and further into drugs and madness. Fane has over looked it, let it slide, because he deals with it. Danny, Tyler, and Abby would never question Fane, because Fane is ruthless, and also because they know he has their best interest at heart. So to do they obey Paull. The power of the one passing on to the next, even if its handled like a feline rolling in a roomful of catnip in Paul’s trembling hands. The laughter subsides to an occasional “ho ho” of maniacal giggles. “Tyler hold his arm out,” he gestures with the bone saw. Paul’s tired of waiting. Tyler does as he’s asked, even as he looks to Abby for some sign of interference on her part. What the hell can she do against Paul? He’d gut her as soon as fuck her. So she sits on floor, Fane’s head in her lap, and can only watch horrified as Paul moves to put the saw on Will’s arm. When your leader is knocked out cold, and the second in command is about to do something stupid because he’s obviously missing a few apples in his bushel, what do you do? “It’s loose.” You interfere. Every one of Fane’s crew blinks at the unexpected voice. Tyler included, his eyes darting around like he expects another person to appear, even though it had been his tongue to say the two-word sentence. Tyler has a quite voice. It sounds more suited to some bookish man that would work at a library. The silence stretches out. Tyler shuffles his feet, his ears reddening, and clears his throat. Danny is giving him a suspicious look as if to say, “What the fuck man?” “It’s loose,” he repeats, and jangles the wooden arm for emphasis. “Just…” he continues, then seems to loose his power of speech, and simply yanks on the arm for emphasis and jerks his head in the direction that he pulls. If he’s right, the pins being yanked out will be far less painful the Paul trying to saw the whole limb off. Telling Paul no is not a good option. People will die if Tyler does that. But offer another idea? That he can do. Paul is watching the colossus with an owlish expression. It melts away, one of devilish glee burning through. Paul laughs and throws the saw towards the table with a clatter. “Alright,” he chortles, high as a kite, and as changeable as the wind. His hand tugs the belt from around his waist. He buckles it around Will’s wrist. Tyler snuggles Will into a familiar embrace. The same throat-chocking, esophagus-crushing headlock. He looks pleased with himself. Fane will be happy that the little bartender doesn't bleed to death. Might just mean a raise. “I’ve never played tug-o-war with a person as the rope before!” Paul laughs, winding the belt around his wrists and hands. Then he heaves. Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:08 pm -------------------------- Will vacillates like a madman himself, grinning fiercely into his chest between glaring at Paul and whimpering every time Danny or Tyler jostles him more than he can bear. It would be very convenient, he thinks, to pass out again. Look at the half-elf over there sleeping like an infant in his mother's lap. Lucky son've a bitch. "He said it," the bartender protests faintly, pointing his bruised chin at Paul's boss. He doesn't get the joke. "Earlier, 'fore ye f-fucked yerself up." Will was warned right off to stay away from the local drugs, though he would have figured it out on his own after a stroll through the cheaper parts of the Cove. Pinch of purple weed in his pipe now and then; chunk of opium on a blue day; he's friendly with a sailor's panaceas. They lack a charm, however, that Will finds abundant in liquor. Liquor's artful. Wine's a culture. Ale's an accomplishment. What's krrf but a bloody quick way to blow through the week's wages. Paul looks like the sort of stupid blighter who'd let himself get hooked on blue. Silver stares at him, watches the overblown posturing and the one-sided gags like a cat entranced by a fish. He should be afraid of Paul, but the fear won't stick. Mostly he's afraid of the knife and the implications of an enormous dick easily converted to what Will has discovered can be a very painful weapon. Paul himself... he's a clown. Some savvy fellows are sore afraid of clowns though, and for good reason. Give a clown a knife and he might just think cutting your throat is a good way to get the audience roaring. If Paul's audience is Fane - and to a lesser extent Abby and the nervous fucks twisting Will's arms about - raping and butchering the silly stupid tender from the quaint pub on the other end of the quay might just set the house to roaring. "Hoi," he interrupts his gyring thoughts softly, watching the bone saw with bloodshot eyes. "Ye won't be takin' me arm." This is... the most sickening deja vu. That squirming, paranoid, and squeamish little homunculus returns all of a sudden and Will feels like a passenger in his own body as the wee devil battles Danny and Tyler's hands, snapping his head back and forth with teeth bared wolfishly. Will himself's still busy psychoanalyzing Paul and remembering, hazily and nonspecifically, that red day two weeks out of Hanghorse when they'd cut off his arm. "'Course it's loose," he murmurs helpfully, each breath catching in a whining cough, "Sh-shitnobs tore it when-- ye twisted me arm by the water. Brahman said it's not meant for-- for fightin'. I c-couldn't afford that one." Indeed, as Tyler holds the dripping limb out horizontally, the inherent fragility of its design is clear. Cleverly crafted of even-grained, hardened oak and steel, Will's arm was a mechanical masterpiece before magic was ever figured into its operation. The ball-joint of the elbow is beautifully done, crooking in a natural manner with no squeaking nor wobbling. The wrist rotates fluidly but is wound with rubber belts inside, allowing him to only revolve it as far as a normal wrist would turn. The hand itself is alive with hinges and polished ball-joints - one for each immaculate knuckle - its wooden bones wrapped with wire and steel banding along the back, padded with a thick palm of brown leather on the inside. His artificial forearm's already been abused by an idle dagger, mostly in the form of scribbled roods, curlicues, and what looks like a crude pair of breasts. Two inches below his armpit, the middle of the upper-arm ends in a steel cap set into a socket surgically attached to the bartender's truncated bicep. To have this installed, Will had endured a fantastically painful but concurrently exhilerating surgery that he doesn't know a damned thing about because he was asleep during it. Brahman had afterwards explained that he had connected the steel socket directly to the remaining bone in the bartender's arm, screwing it into place with thick pins and healing the skin around the protruding ports. A more expensive arm would have had some clever enchantment to vaccuum-suck it in place, but 'more expensive' was not a phrase Will had ever been fond of. He went away sore but ecstatic, dirt poor but crowing, promising to keep out of fights. This he had mostly done. Will tended to end most fights immediately after entering them, after all. Danny and Tyler's brute irreverence have given old Brahman's warnings new poignance in Silver's mind however. Perhaps the bone had already been splintering unbeknownst to him or perhaps Will just hadn't been careful enough, but Tyler set a chain reaction going when he twisted it out of place in the alley, and the day's events have exacerbated it. Each of the artificer's sturdy pins have plowed their way down the delicate bone, tearing open the thin scar tissue and covering the socket and arm-cap with blood. The sticky crimson dribbles down his insensate arm sickeningly as Tyler jiggles it, draining Will's sweaty face of colour and dulling his eyes. Going to be sick again... It's a fine arm to be sure put on display now for Paul's edification, and after six months going about like a cripple with only one hand to his name Will had crowed and sung and drunk and exalted when he left the artificer's as a newly symmetrical man. Simulacrums are bloody expensive! It took overtime and Sundays, pinching, scraping, and eating hay for him to afford even the cheapest model old Brahman offered in his stinking seaside shop ("Oh, but is Master Robinson certain he does not wish to pay an extra pittance for a strength enhancement? Legerity? Additional knuckles? Self-lubricating palm?"). It may be the cheapest model, bare bones, no frills, but to Silver it's solid gold; it's normalcy again, and freedom from pity. He never wanted to be pitied by a single goddamned person. Even Master Stubbs had only been pitying him, he suspects, by giving the tending job to a one-armed sailor who couldn't get work hauling lines with half efficiency. He'd slaved for this arm. He'd earned it. But all he can think about now, as it's threatened, is the first time he lost it. They'd held him down just like this but on a table, and emptied sawdust on the floor. Everyone had looked so fucking sorry. That roomful of eyes had been the worst of it, perhaps. "Not takin' me arm," Will wheezes helplessly in Tyler's headlock, his white face splotched blue and scarlet. The simulacrum jerks and tugs, fist balled, invisible insects of self-aware magic fizzing at the joints and where the arteries should fork. "NO!" he cries, kicking against the floor and smashing at Tyler's legs with his naked heels, bugging eyes looking to Abby for help, even to slumbering Fane, "Don't! Don'tdon'tdon'tdon'tdon't--!!" Poppies are friendly; a sleepy flower, reminding a fellow of the futility of sorrow and the inevitability of the afterlife, a place where no one would want for anything. Paul's not friendly; a violent clown, this one, reminding a fellow of the futility of resistance and the inevitability of loss, which they all would suffer, some way or another, in the end. Paul wins. Will roars and throws himself against Tyler in a seizure of transcendant torment, his shoulder exploding like a keg of cannon powder as Paul plays tug o' war with his prosthetic. Wooden fingers stretch and strain erratically, the hand juddering in its wrist socket like a rat speared by a dagger. On the other end of it Silver screams, takes awful, choking breaths, and screams again. He chins his captor violently with the top of his thrashing head, gagging on his tongue as something in his brain ruptures. There's a discernible whiff of sorcery. His shoulder tears out of joint and his collarbone is creaking dangerously before his humerus finally shatters, sending gory pins and screws bouncing about like a fat man's snapped buttons. Tyler's spritzed with a fine patina of Robinson blood but Paul gets the real prize. Will's simulacrum is (was) the cheapest model on the floor. The enchantments are as thorough as any of the spells Brahman uses on the classier models for he prides himself on quality, but they do not feed off an external magic supply. Instead they are wired to draw power directly from the arm's wearer, making said wearer a little more quick to tire by day's end, a little hungrier, a little thirstier, but otherwise unharmed. As the ensorcelled socket's ripped away from Will's shoulder however, the enchantment's messily and improperly severed. It whipcracks Paul across the face like white-hot barbed wire, dragging through soft tissue. Tyler barely escapes a lashing himself but he may never get the puddled blood and marrow out of his clothes. Something intangible is bleeding and hurt in the bartender's head. He quiets. His blue eyes roll backwards, his chin drops, and his bicycling legs hang flacid, struggles forgotten. Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:16 am -------------------------- Abby screams, jumping to her feet, Fane’s head slipping to the floor. His eyes pop open on impact. The ceiling is fuzzy, and the noise is sending needles into his brains. Why are people being so loud? They should only be screaming when he’s already awake. The belt's dropped. Paul screams and stumbles. His hands come up to cradle his face. His nose is mangled, one eye gone, lips and cheeks a pulpy mess. Abby is pushing past him, to get to Will, to see that he’s still alive. His severed limb is bleeding and hangs wrong in its socket. He dangles in Tyler’s arms. “Will?” Tyler and Danny both looking frozen and aghast. The screaming they’d anticipated, but not the magical backlash. She touches his chest, hoping to feel a heart beat and the raise and fall of breath. Paul’s squeal climbs into enraged and he wraps his hand in her hair, dragging Abby back to him. His remaining eye is wild and inhuman. Rolling in his head. Paul is no longer home. Please leave a message at the tone. Abby claws at his hand, her mouth open, and eyes horror-struck. She stabs at his face, over her shoulder, the scalpel’s point gleaming. Fane has gotten an elbow under him and a hand. His head wants to stay near the floor, the world seems steadier there. Abby screams again and it is not a sound he knows or would ever pull from her. It blows the fog from his mind like a hurricane come to land. His head snaps up. Paul drags the knife from Abby soft fingers. He reverses the blade in his own hand. She bats at him franticlly as he drags her up to tiptoe by the hair. Fane’s eyes widen and he gets to his knees. Speed has left him. Strength has left him. He stumbles to his feet, and feels like he’s encased in wool. Danny and Tyler drop Will, lunging forward. All to slow. The knife cuts the air. It cuts into creamy, white skin. Cuts through the delicate, pulsing life of carotid arteries. The slender, hollow, cylindrical elegance and design of gristle, blood, and air. Madness seems to fall away with the first drops of blood that spray into the room. Paul looks bewildered. His hand opens, and Abby falls to his feet, clawing at her neck, blood pumping out of her slit throat, gushing in a scarlet waterfall down her breasts. She looks bollixed and aghast. Paul’s gaze tracks her progress. He turns dazed eyes to Fane. The great and terrible feeling in Fane’s chest comes close to killing him. He reaches Paul as the first spray of blood splatters outward. He is a nightmare to behold. His mouth a snarl of rage. Strength returned, born from the vengeance in his eyes. He’s wrapping a hand around the back of Paul’s head, and another at his jaw. He's twisting as Abby’s body touches the stone floor, a shout jumping from Fane’s chest, or is it a sob, as he hears the tiny bones in Paul’s neck grind and pop like green wood snapping. Paul’s one remaining eye looks surprised as he falls, mere inches from Abby. Fane is already tumbling to his knees at Abby side. “NO!” He tries to hold the blood in. “No Abby.” His voice is a wisp. She is leaving him though. He can see it in her eyes even as he gathers the tattered remains of his healing abilities. She looks glad to see him, if not sad to have to go so soon. Her lips form a last word. It is not the one he would have wished from her at the end of their time together. Not love. Nor thank you. No good bye. That beautiful mouth moves, and even though there is no air to push the word out, he hears it. Will. Her fingers spasm, she shudders, mouth gasping for a breath that will never come, and then stills. Her eyes, such a beautiful green even now, stare at some distant point no person can ever hope to see if they still live. “No Abby,” Fane moans and curls around her, that terrible weight growing in his chest until it threatens to crush his heart. What the hell just happened? Whatthehelljusthappened? Whatthehelljusthappenedwhatthehelljusthappened? “What the hell just happened?” His voice bounces around the room, throwing his words back at him. His pain. His anger. His confusion. He looks up at Danny and Tyler who stand there, big bodies powerless. “GET THE FUCK OUT!” he bellows at them. They run. The door slams shut, muffling his chocked-off sob. Fane creaks upward, the floor wobbles under him. Abby lays at his feet. He feels like an old man, slick with death. His steps in wetness and stumbles back, out of Abby’s blood. It coats him already though. He is bathed in her. He looks around, and sees the arm first. The belt wrapped around its wrist. It is Paul’s belt. The urge to kill him comes all over again, and he wails with the rage of it, fingers flexing in fists, every muscle tightening in his body. His eyes fall on Will. Fane’s never felt so tired in all his life as he does at this very moment. He could lay down with Abby, and sleep for an eternity. She had asked it from him, her last word for this stranger. So he approaches, to use whatever he has left to heal the bartender again. If he has anything left at all. Last edited by wickediamond on Sat Mar 04, 2006 2:29 am; edited 1 time in total Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:44 am -------------------------- In Keltara, for a while, Father Duane had done his damnedest to try and bully the knight back out of Will once he discovered the irresponsible sailor's heritage. Will would visit the corpse twice a week to detail how sinful he had been the previous few days, whom he had bedded, how late he had slept afterwards; then he would get his dose of lecture, pray, and go away knowing his mum'd be happy to see what a good little Iocan she'd raised. It had felt proper and made him less homesick. Father Duane was even sort of interesting to talk to, sometimes. Except when he would put on a mantle of superiority and prate endlessly of Magick. Father Duane had thought magick was the highest art, the worthiest pursuit; far more elegant in combat than sword or stave; more healthful to the ailing mortal form than unguents, herbs, or medicines. It was a sign of the divinity inherent in humankind, he had said. He'd been positively aghast when he'd learned Will thought most of it was bollocks, and had abandoned it when he'd abandoned the navy. Will could almost hear the zombie berating him now. Oh, William, why haven't ye been getting the simulacrum maintenanced regularly? "Fuckin' expensive, Father Duane," murmurs the sailor, only another bloody, broken heap on Fane's body-strewn floor. Language! Now, where are basic motor functions seated in the mind? "Uh..." Where and how do they connect with the Dark? "Ah..." Is that pornography ye are reading behind that grimoire? He giggles breathily, dreamily into the darkness. "Ye don't "read" it s'much..." ...give us a look and don't be stingy. If Father Duane quizzed Will now on exactly how it was he could move the hunk of wood and metal on his left shoulder at all, the bartender could make a better showing of himself. He could indicate to the disapproving rotbag exactly where in his skull the Dark connected with his thoughts - mostly because it feels like someone's left a bloody great axe carelessly sticking out of his brain right there. A man's screaming somewhere. Will moans some senseless question from the floor, trying to put a face to the tortured sound. If he could just open his eyes he could pull the axe out of his head... escape Father Duane's lecturing... get something to drink... That's the problem with zombies. Not heir to mortal weaknesses themselves, they forget that visitors might grow tired after two hours of lecturing, or need a bite of tucker. His silver head lolls from one side to the other, trailing wounded animal sounds likely worrying whatever gentle hand it is tracing out the drawling heartbeat beneath his breastbone. He's a little lonely when the hand pulls away. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Something is enormously, desperately, painfully wrong. Will shudders around the rib poking into his lung, and can't open his eyes. Even with them helplessly pasted shut he feels dizzy and nauseated, caught in some nightmare with his thoughts no longer on speaking terms with his body. Is he paralyzed? Is that someone he hears weeping? ...Father Duane? ...something is missing. Sawdust clumped into gory chunks and polished steel, teeth befouled and bloody? No. A jealous half-mad bully, ropy forearms, and so much pain he can't move; can't curl into his shoulder for touching it is like burning it, and can't bend his tender back without sobbing helplessly into the floor. The next second someone remembers his axe. Will feels the blade leaving his grey matter with a sickening slorping sensation, little drips and gloops of thought and magick curling back into his brain wrinkles apologetically. He remembers he's in Sharteshane now, that Father Duane is a smear of grease somewhere in the underground, and that some hipping wanker has torn off his arm. No sooner is he anticipating consciousness than the sobbing gains clarity and, despite his silent protests, he opens his eyes to a Shakespearian tragedy. He sees Abby first, a shimmering cloak of blood trailing from her throat towards the horrid drain in the centre of the room. Her eyes are open and her head lays awkwardly. She's dead. So is Paul, though it takes Will a moment to recognise him through the grotesque carnival mask that once was his aristocratically handsome countenance. It suits him better now, the bartender thinks numbly. Little more cosmically honest. A familiar oblong shape rests near his dead fingers, gleaming and bent. Will knows it like the back of his hand. His throat's hoarse and tight with screams and tears. He can't manage anymore. Little mouse noises is all, weakly worked free around shallow swallows of air as he stares at the distant prosthetic uncomprehendingly. He would curse Fane or beg for his life, now, if he could focus on anything outside of his own selfish universe of agony and the new distance between himself and his arm. There's Fane himself in fact, his eyes bejewelled and beguiling. If Silver didn't know better he'd swear those were tears. Perhaps his goons hadn't died as slowly as he'd hoped. Perhaps he'd become too aroused too quickly, and killed them artlessly while Will, grown tedious, napped on the blood-sticky floor. Does he regret it now? Will digs his heels into the ground as the half-elf approaches, retreating a full inch in a grueling slide of shoulder and hip against stone before the pain overcrows him and he wilts, doll legs kicking feebly, lips working soundlessly over his teeth. Blue eyes roll over Fane and away, rabid and uncontained. They're shut up behind bruised eyelids and turned to the floor amidst coughs and incomprehensible mumbles of melting magic and axes and godohgodohgod. Little remains of the bit of arm once still attached to his shoulder. it's an oozing crimson hole now, the splintered bone visible and pale beneath a few flaps of thin skin. It isn't bleeding nearly as much as it could be though. Brahman had wisely tucked the tied-off arteries well into the bartender's armpit. It hurts as things must hurt in hell, where pain burns into one's very soul. Silver cowers from it, baring his raw back to hot scourges and Fane's inevitable knife. There would be one bright side, he quietly thinks, to the half-elf's coming to murder him now. It would end this. Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:40 am -------------------------- “Stop,” Fane says. The word is tired. He watches Will trying to scramble away with despondent dejection. When the bartender doesn’t still, his expression chances, becoming a little fiercer. “Stop you fool,” he orders again, voice gruff and displeased. If he keeps worming around like that Will’s just going to make a mess of his newly healed back. He closes the distance in one last long stride. “Damnit stop!” Will rolls from him and he curses as he sees the mess that’s been made of his work. Some of it still looks ok, but the spots around his shoulders are raw and oozing again. “Fuck!” Fane curses. All the work he had done. The draining work that had rendered him unconscious and immobile, that had sapped him of his strength, and robbed him of the ability to heal Abby, it was all fucked up and fouled again. Why the fuck had he even bothered! He rolls Will roughly onto his stomach. “Hold still. Let me see what I can do.” He places a hand on Will again, and tries to fix some of the damage. Nothing. He gets nothing. He can’t even do the last thing Abby had asked him. Fane bites his lip in consternation, closes his eyes to contain the tears that threaten at the edges, and looks deep within himself. Deeper yet. Yes, there. His little ball of healing power barely flickers, smaller then its ever been. Only a tiny amount has regenerate. A thimble full to drop on all this misery he feels rolling beneath him. What the hell can he do with this? What should he use it on. There’s just so much pain. All screaming out for relief. “This is all my fault,” he mutters, self-loathing rolling through him like a black tide. The job had gone horribly wrong. He’d done work like this before, but never had it become such a catastrophe. Paul, also his responsibility. Now dead. Demented, wicked Paul who had come to him, and been his bright and shining blade. Always a little dangerous and reckless. A boy who’d like to be pushed, screaming to the edge. He’d been so beautiful when Fane had first met him. Then he’d gotten addicted, and that wonderfully jagged edge became even worst. Fane had done what he could, had actually liked the control he could get over the boy through moderating his drugs. Another kind of dominate. One that had added a bitter swirl to their relationship. Fane should have rehabilitated him… or killed him long ago. He had indulged though, to soft-hearted, to enamored with the supremacy. Then there was Abby. Abby, who Paul had brought home and hid for weeks, like a sweets bag, in the back of his closet. When Fane had found her, the dairy maid’s innocent soul was shattered. Paul had been to hard, but he had given her a taste she had come to crave. When he took her, it had been another wedge driven between Paul and him. Under Fane’s hands she had blossomed. Falling into all the delicious torments he could think of with open arms. They’d even invented a couple new ones. Abby had had the most supple screams. She had been his to protect, nurture, and in his own way, even love. She had been his prick of conscience, a lovely tea rose hiding its thorns, the comforting embrace he sought at the end of his day. Now they are both gone. His charming psychopath. His fucked up little angel. Fane does what he can, using his little drop of healing to ease the torment of a broken rib, and then what’s left, he releases like a mist through Will’s whole body. Like laudanum, but without the nasty side effects. A little pain killer that deadens the nerves, and sets everything to a bearable, distant groan. “It’s the best I can do,” he says gruffly, and leaves Will for a second to retrieve both of their pants. He pulls his on, and tears his shirt into strips, gathering more cloth from the mess on his table. A little more rummaging and he locates a tiny clay pot that they keep around for abused skin. It’s green, creamy goodness soothes abraded flesh. When he reaches Will’s side he dumps the bartender’s trousers on the stone floor, and turns his attention to more conventional methods of healing. He binds Will’s ribs and shoulder, and uses some of the cream on Will’s back. He looks at the dislocated shoulder, unsure how to proceed. Without an arm to guide the limb, it is going to be hard to set. “We can try to set it back in place,” he mutters, displeasure at the lack of options coloring his voice. He could probably force the joint back in, but it would be another agony for the bartender’s already sore, mangled arm. Of course it would hurt less after they set it. “What do you want to do.” All the while, lurking at the back of his mind, lie two bodies. A deluge of anguish, growing and building, just waiting for its chance to get to heavy, and break, drowning him in soul-leaching bleakness. So he concentrates on the task at hand, of getting Will Robinson put back together, so he can get him the fuck out his house and life. Last edited by wickediamond on Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:38 pm; edited 1 time in total Sat Mar 04, 2006 5:26 am -------------------------- Will scarcely believes Fane is administering to him again, even as he lays beneath the half-elf and feels the prickles of salubrious power pinching and plying his flesh. Healing magic is lovely. Magic is lovely. Duane hadn't been completely crackers. Just mostly. The red tide recedes until he has a bit of wet sand to precariously balance himself on, windmilling his arms and bending his knees for purchase against the looming sea of pain and the buffetting of things he should be obsessing over (buggeredbuggeredbuggered and he'll never be anything but a filthy little nobpocket again). The rustling of his trousers rouses him from a stupor of relief and subsequent exhaustion. He opens his eyes and sees the scuffed and bloody garments laying there, a weird link to the reality that... well, that must still exist somewhere. It seems Abby had pried them off him nearly a year ago, when he was still having a one-sided argument with himself insisting this either wasn't happening or he'd figure a way out of it before it did. He'd been wrong about that one. Will doesn't fight Fane as he wads bandages into his shoulder, only staring instead at unmoving Abby, expecting her to put fingers to her new smile and smear the blood over her lips inquisitively. That would be like her. "Why?" he asks quietly. It's all the same to him but, "Why'd ye kill 'em?" And why are ye healing me? Fane's crazy though. Will watches him neurotically, not trying to hide this opinion in his blood-loss blue expression or his pain-bright eyes. Of course it's all Fane's fault. Things like this happen when you make deals with Redemptionists, kidnap naive young bartenders, put your cock up places it's not meant to go; violence begets violence, even when you think the victm you have trussed up in chains won't ever have the balls to seek retribution against ye, and when you think ye know what boxes have the harness and which the scalpels. People bleed and hurt and die when you cut them. That Fane doesn't realise this... Well, Fane's crazy. "Don't touch me," Will intends to snarl as the sadist starts making eyes at his shoulder. The snarl comes out closer to a beggar's tired request at the foot of the gallows though, and he pushes himself onto his ass in one swift, terrified movement, the room spinning. Fane's face is a fine anchor as the world swims behind his white head, and the bartender stares at him fixedly, trembling. He needs to get out of here before the bastard has another mood swing-- This is the Cove. Can't run out naked into the street. Someone would knife him on principle. Need to get his arm. Aye. Still staring at Fane, he reaches for his trousers, settling them before his toes. This feels frustratingly familiar. Each leg is untwisted, bunched up, and tugged over his feet with his one hand. The difficult tubes of fabric are worked one at a time over his knees, little whines and squeaks accompanying each overeager maneuver or twist of his back or shoulders. He's still waiting for the knife. Waiting to have some other piece removed and some lame apology made with magic or drugs. "Of course it's your fault," he can't help but mutter, silver eyebrows seesawing from anger to pain to disbelief. He needs something to drink, somewhere to puke, somewhere to pass out. "Cut your throat now. S'the only-- way t'make it right. Bloody-- crocodile tears. Know what-- what those are? Bloody snake. Bloody snake." Sat Mar 04, 2006 1:15 pm -------------------------- Intent on his task, he continues to fuss with the various scraps and bruises. “Should probably just get you to another physician to take care of the arm.” He falls back as Will sits up. He sees the agony crawl across the other man’s face, and his hand comes out to keep Will from hitting his back again, if he so decides to pass out. Fane crawls back another pace, barely within arms reach, and stays kneeling by Will’s side. The rejection of his aid is understandable, and he can tell it would be unwise to offer assistance in helping him to dress. Besides if he wants to flounder if further pain, who is he to interfere. He follows Will’s gaze, the question only just now registering. He looks at Abby, and swallows a miserable noise that tries to crawl out of him. The knife sits by Paul’s hand. His knife. He frowns, the denial to the accusation in the question already forming, but he can’t defend himself, so he lets it remain unvoiced. They are both dead at his hands. Abby just lacked the physical action, and Will’s confirmation of his own thoughts twists like a knife in his guts. “I was careless.” His voice is as dull and lifeless as his eyes as he stares at his disaster. “I failed her.” Fane stands suddenly, and crosses to Abby’s body. He kneels by her, not caring of the cold blood now. She looks to much like a broken doll, thrown on the floor. It tears at his heart to see her like that. “I all but put it in his hand. Didn’t I,” he whispers to her. He straightens her crooked limbs, picks a blood-soaked strand of hair from her cheek. It leaves a crimson smear, and that unhappy noise finds its way past his lips. His fingers are tender as he tries to close her eyes. Hide from her accusing stare. “You killed me,” they moan. He kisses her forehead, already cooling to the touch. He moves on to Paul’s body, and sets his crocked head right. The sickening angle no spine can take makes him seem inhuman. Fane’s distress grows as he sees just how ruined Paul’s face is. “To slow,” he says, living that moment again. Trying to reaching Paul before the slice of that knife. "To stupid." He should have been more careful with his powers. If he’d been awake, Paul never would have done what he did. They will both be burned. Two more souls devoured by the Cove. He picks up the knife by Paul’s hand. The blood is thick on the blade. Fane walks over to Will’s side. He stands over the bartender. “You’re right, it is my fault.” A feeling of judgment crawls over him. This man should be his jury and executioner. He already knows the verdict and sentence. The barrenness of death coming to accept him in tender arms. The wetness creeping down his cheeks is not self-pitying tears. It is not! He refuses to think he’d mourn his own life. "What should I do?" he askes, feeling lost and very alone. His mistakes crawl like bile in his throat. He wonders if they’d spill out with his blood. Bleeding away with a swift cut. This morose emotion he’s wallowing in is revolting. Better to die now then wilt further into this detestable bleak state! He shudders with the overload of emotions, and wishes Will would take the knife. Stab him. Slice him. Anything to show that he isn’t just worm food that hasn't yet died. He could find himself again in physical pain. He feels so lost right now. Sat Mar 04, 2006 2:42 pm -------------------------- Freedom's knocking. Will's eyes dart from Fane's dead face to the door. It would be too cruel for the psychopath to forget this uncharacteristic caprice of grief and throw himself again on helpless old Will now, when he has his wonderful togs finally up over his ass, his package tucked safely away, his remaining hand thumbing buttons through his fly so accomodatingly. No, this is it. He's going through that door. "Ye didn't kill her," he realises breathily, inching back towards the wall. It aids a slow ascent to his feet. What he wouldn't give for his partisan - less to skewer Fane than to play third leg. Without it he only rises half way, crouched and hugging the wall. Paul must have done it right after-- well, aye, that's what'd happened to his face. Brahman said to be careful taking the arm off to swim in case of just such a backlash. And that's why his head hurts. Fractured enchantment in there, prodding against memories and his inner ear. The other half had cracked Paul across the face. Must have felt like a bloody bull whip. Will almost pities the ugly corpse. "N-no, he did it. Paul did it. And then... ye did Paul." Did anyone think to do Talon? No? Silver'd get to that, no worries. The half-elf's a tender mourner, settlings limbs and eyelids with a reverence unique to family. Will watches him at it, mystified and afraid. He's never seen a bigger contradiction in his life. Fane is a walking paradox. And fucking crazy, what. "Ye make no sense," Will complains, wrapping a hand to his ribs and finding a safe spot on his right shoulder to lean against the rough wall. "Wh-why... why all this? Why f-fuckin' do all've th-that then... then regret and plaint and heal? I--" He grinds his temple into the masonry. "Tell me why-- or it'll drive me m-mad later, I think." The knife's refused with a tilting-away of his face and a jiggle of his sweat-dark head. "What d'ye want from me? Don't kill yourself. Helps nawt. Cowardly. Fixes nawt. Make it right. Lemme go." Will isn't the most eloquent creature at the best of times. Right now sane, sensible words seem as likely as somersaults and cartwheels. "Only... only d-don't do this again. Get out've it. Maybe someone's-- tryin' t'show ye 'tis a bad way. Bad business. Yer no g-good at it. Cuttin' and healin' with no sense. Ye-- ye t-took the skin off me!" God, it's funny. God, it's insane. "Ye took the skin off me," he chokes, hiding against the wall in a miserable bundle, "And me arm. And ye-- ye--" Fane knows the rest of it; the bits too obscene and disgusting now even to give voice to. Will wants to convince the mad blighter to cut himself a new smile, but the vitriol stays buried, black and green in his belly and heart. "Why do I have t'comfort you?" Sat Mar 04, 2006 4:07 pm -------------------------- Fane approaches with each word, the knife still in his hand. No good at it. Not good? “What else do I know,” Fane asks himself, bewildered at the suggestion. The tears slow, and then stop. “I hurt people because… because I like it,” he explains patiently. It’s like the words are a dressings. Tiny bits of plaster that cover the swirling confusion and pain. Hide it all away again. Stuff it back behind that cracked wall. Fane stands before Will now, hears the confusion and anger in the other man's voice. The emotions of a tormented soul. Emotions that come from other people, not himself. The ground beneath his feet seems more stable. “I heal for the same reason.” What other reason would he do something? It feels good, and so he does it. It’s right to put something back together after he’s broken it a bit. "So I can do it again." Paul wouldn’t be fixed. Abby will remain busted. But.. but maybe he can fix Will. It’s what he’s asking for isn’t it? Will who seems so delectably lost and afraid. He looks at the bartender huddled on the wall, giving an account of the tasks he’s preformed. All the mesmeric things he’s done. You wouldn't have thought it possible five seconds ago, but Fane feels the first stirs of desire at that reminder. Will had been good. Tasted good. Felt good. Screamed good. Abby had been right. Will is sweet. Like honey and spice cakes. Syrupy peaches and crème. Rich. Filling. “Our time together was good. It was all fouled by that Redemptionist.” That was where it had gone wrong. That was the heart of the problem. Yes. He should never have trusted an Eyeball. That is what had gotten Abby killed. Tangled up in a mess she should have been well away from. Talon is to blame for Paul meeting Will in the first place. He stops a hands-breath from the bartender. He would like to embrace this man again. If only to get rid of the loneliness that seems to still cling to him. The loss of Abby and Paul are like the absence of a limb. He can now relate to the bartender. They can relate to one another right? Of course they can. In his mind, he sees the mark he’d carved on Will’s skin, and a happy sound sighs from his lips. It doesn’t matter that he can’t touch him now. A part of him will always be with Will Silver. There are other days. Fane turns away, the knife slipping from his fingers. He goes back to Abby’s side, and gathers her into his arms. He buries his face in her soft hair and inhales its fading fragrance. Blood smears across his chin and cheek. He stands, Abby still in his arms, and turns. “You should go now,” he says, absent-minded, thoughts already concentrated somewhere else. He focuses back on Will, gaze razor-intent. “You really need to go.” It is a growl, a command, and a warning. Then he looking back down at Abby. “Tyler will see you out…”