[miaa]

Keti awoke slowly. Her entire body ached. Groggy and disoriented she wondered faintly where she was. Then shivering she realized she was lying naked on a stone floor, her foot attached to a two foot length of chain.

The world spun a bit and she had to work to think clearly, if at all. She could hear water dripping in the distance and licked her dry cracked lips.
I need water, she thought as she began to see the shapes form in the grey light. She tried to stand but her legs were not strong enough. So dizzy that she thought she might be sick. She forced herself onto her hands and knees. Head pounding, holding one eye closed from the incredible pain, she moved closer to the bag he had left behind and dragged it closer.

She peered in and discovered bandages and another vial of salve. Then noticed the rope still coiled on the floor. Her mind frantically searched for ways of using it as a weapon but she failed to figure out how.
Slowly she heaved herself into a crude alcove built into the wall and looked around the room.
It had been built within a cave . The stone walls moist but there was a low light coming in from a recessed barred window. She sensed it was bigger than she could see. The heavy wood door was closed.

She realized then that her fate was very much tied up with this strange old man. If he did not come soon she would die of thirst. She did not wish to think about which would be the worse fate.

First things first, she thought as she applied the ointment to her wounds bandaging her infected wrists as best she could. Then slowly and carefully she placed her tongue on the stone wall and licked.

[RogueLion]

As her tongue touched the damp wall, she heard - and felt - a muffled "whump" that registered in her ears but which she also felt through the stone bench beneath her, almost as if the floor had jumped. Chunks of rock rattled loose from the ceiling above her, followed by a few small, hissing showers of dirt.

The thing she had heard down the tunnel gave a startled shriek but went promptly quiet as if listening.

Several moments of tense silence passed and then the sound came again - it was somewhere above her but seemed closer now. More small pieces of the ceiling and a dry rain of stone dust fell around her and she could now feel a faint vibration in her feet. The thing in the tunnel suddenly erupted in a bizarre, terrified caterwauling, so loud she was forced to cover her ears.

The vibration in her feet grew more intense and she immediately became aware of another sound, building quickly - like distant thunder that, rather than fade away, rolled closer and louder until it drowned out even the creature's piercing screams...

And then all was still. The thunder ceased and the screams ended, and the waiting silence of her cell returned, but now the air had a dead, weighted feeling to it.

The low light that had been creeping through the window was gone, leaving her in perfect darkness.

And the beast began to scream again......

[RogueLion]

Premonition

Se’te’kaa sat cross-legged on a thick, richly-colored carpet that covered most of the rough plank flooring of his cabin. He held his qassaba poised in front of him, elbows relaxed, fingers drifting from one finger hole to the next as he played. The tune rose and fell softly, hypnotically, mimicking the gentle rise and fall of his ship around him, or the sleeper’s breath whose slumber has carried them below the reach of dreams.

The music reached out and enveloped Khatt’s mind, its warm and haunting touch pulling her – gently but irrevocably – into that altered state of consciousness the qassaba masters called menta ta nochte – “the waking dream”. His intention was to get her to show him the old man who had attacked her and, more importantly, where in the jungle she had found his hut. Unfortunately, she was so traumatized from the encounter he had not had much luck pulling any useful information out of her and it had taken him all afternoon just to coax her out from under the bed. Even the threat of the whip could not get her to sort through the jumbled pieces of her memory.

After some time spent sitting on the bed listening to her whimpering underneath him, he had hit on the idea of the menta ta nochte. It was typically used for a master player to guide his disciple through a meditative journey – the master would project his visions to the student - but if the student was skilled enough, sometimes the master could actually draw out the disciple’s own projections. Khatt was very skilled with her qassaba – she had actually become a better player than he was, though he would never admit to it - and she had seemed to be highly receptive to previous attempts. Se’te’kaa suspected that the master-slave relationship was more fertile ground for the menta ta nochte than the master-student, and he looked forward to discussing it with a qassaba master the next time he visited the Hushite camps.

So he had retrieved his instrument, sat cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, and begun to play. Khatt grew quiet almost instantly, and after several moments he began to slip into the trance-like state that preceded the menta ta nochte. The room around him gradually brightened until the dark teakwood walls of his cabin dissolved in brilliant sunshine. He found himself standing on the hard cracked ground of a dessert. His surroundings spun about him first in a blur before slowing and eventually solidifying into a familiar area in Keshatta, near Thoth-Amon’s stronghold. He squinted against the hot glare, even though his eyes were closed where his body sat onboard his ship.

Using the qassaba to bend the air to his will, he reached out for Khatt’s mind, the melody slipping under the bed with purpose and precision. “Come to me, Di’Si” it whispered.

In the vision, she slowly appeared, furtively moving in a half-crouch out of the glare to kneel before him. She looked up, her face a mixture of worry and fear.

In his cabin, he continued to play, and the music sharpened ever so slightly. In his vision, he spoke. “Show me.”

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, her lips and chin trembling. She closed her eyes and furrowed her brow, sticking the tip of her tongue out in fierce concentration.

Behind her, the hunched shape of a man began to materialize. His skin was very dark, almost black. His bald head glistened with sweat that ran in fine rivulets across hollow cheeks into a bushy black beard shot with streaks of gray. His face was creased and leathery, and his eyes – twin, blood-red coals that burned with intensity – stared out from sunken, bruised sockets. Even before he raised a hand to stifle a wet cough, Se’te’kaa could see that he was ill.

But then something strange happened and the vision shifted. A darker shadow materialized behind the old man and began moving towards them. The shadow became a silhouette as it sauntered slowly out of the surrounding desert glare, its curves and gait clearly marking it as a woman. The old man seemed completely unaware of her, but the newcomer made straight for him. With a dismissive wave, she stepped through the old man and, as she did so, his face flashed in surprise before his image scattered like colored smoke.

Se'te'kaa could see her sharp features clearly now. Merciless green eyes, accentuated by the sulfide-darkened edges of her lids, raked across Khatt’s back with the barest hint of recognition. She raised one eyebrow and cocked her head slightly, worrying her lower lip with small white teeth. With a start, she raised her head as if suddenly becoming aware of him. Her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head further to one side, a huntress evaluating him and trying to determine if he was prey or predator. A sultry smirk stole across her lips and she spoke.

“Give him back.”

Still on her knees, Khatt glanced up in alarm and turned at the sound of the woman’s voice. In the cabin onboard the Te‘Jjarho, she screamed.

[Demala]

The water slid off her body as she stepped out of the tub, spilling onto the floor. Making a mess. An anxious house-slave brought a towel to her and rubbed her wet skin with it, and she lifted her arms so the girl could dry under them. Kashta closed her eyes as the towel moved over her breasts, lower, and sighed unhappily as she recalled the practiced touch of her slave, Vega.

She'd thought he was devoted...thought he was hers. He'd endured so much at her hands, and had grown to crave it, she knew this, believed it. Why had he run?

Bah. She had more important things to worry about these days.

The house slave had backed away at her sigh, her eyes wide and frightened. Grumbling, Kashta snatched the towel from her hands and rubbed herself briskly, ignoring the now cowering girl. Damned incompetence.

Vega had left, run away, and right when she needed him. If only he'd been in Abydos when Hnazant appeared, when Satetka had brazenly shown his face. The mad priest always seemed to be able to escape..but Hnazant, Hnazant was a special case. Kashta remembered him too, how hard he had driven the slaves of Xu'Set to bring her what she needed to make their city grand, how well he knew the swamps. How he'd betrayed the Acolytes with Satetka. She gritted her teeth as she started to dress, pulling the discreet robes over her body. Tarantia was a dangerous place for her, and much colder than the sensual heat of her homeland. Kashta wouldn't be wearing her accustomed clothing today.

May he rot in the belly of his precious serpent....

It was Hnazant's knowledge of the swamps that had let him escape them. When he toppled from the walkway and into the swamp water, an arrow buried in his shoulder, she'd been sure they had him. But their search didn't find him. Their people came back empty-handed. Kashta was furious.

She made her way out of the bathing room and down the stairs, into the bustle of the tavern. Catching the eye of the barkeep, she motioned him over, and kept her voice low.

"That girl...the one who helped me with my bath. How much for her?"

He blinked for a moment in confusion, then smiled, showing gaps where someone's fist had cost him some teeth. His leer showed that he assumed what men always assumed, but she didn't correct it....he might not sell her the slave if he knew what she really wanted her for.

"Two gold"

She snorted, and pasted a sneer on her face. "Thirty silver, and you should count yourself lucky! The chit was incompetent, barely worth what you must pay to feed her."

The haggling began in earnest, and several minutes later Kashta left the tavern, her coin purse lighter by one gold, ten silver. Good, she would want something to relax herself when she was done searching today.

She headed down the streets of Tarantia, keeping an eye out for...well, anything. She didn't trust this place, not anymore. But she didn't know where else to go to find Kanlar, and Kanlar had extensive contacts that could be of benefit to her.

She started her search with her hood covering her face, and her back tense, expecting an attack. This would likely take some time.

Hnazant would answer for this, as well.

[RogueLion]

((well done and welcome to the thread ))

[Demala]

She sidestepped, just in time to avoid an apparently drunk patron from plowing into her. His eyes flashed with anger, frustration, as he stumbled into the wall, and Kashta smirked at him from underneath her hood.

"Go find easier prey."

The cutpurse spat at her, his spittle decorating the hem of her robes before he disappeared through the door. Lovely. She hated this place...hated the lack of dark-skinned people, the chill in the air, the rudeness of the lower classes. At least in Khemi, the beggars knew how to give an entertaining blessing...or curse. Here, here they were so uncivilized. What did Kanlar see in this city, that kept him here so much?

Sighing, she turned to the barkeep. He could have been the brother of the man she'd spoken to about the slave girl, complete with gaps in his teeth. Maybe it wasn't barfights that were to blame. Maybe it was the swill they served, that rotted their teeth out from within.

Bah. This wouldn't get her anywhere. She schooled her features into a pleasant smile, knowing that her hood would make indistinct almost everything but her decidedly healthy, clean teeth from the man. This was the fourth such place she'd been to, and she prayed to her god that he would be here, or that the barkeep would at least know of him.

"Excuse me, I wonder if you could give me some information. I'm looking for someone, a Stygian by the name of Kanlar. He's a tall man, wears his hair in braids...." Kashta's voice fell off as she noticed the man wasn't even looking at her anymore, but behind her. How rude.

Turning, her mask of pleasant acceptance gave way to a smile of true pleasure, as she forgot the barkeep. "Well hello, Kanlar. I've been looking for you."

He smirked as his gaze travelled along her robed body. "Not your usual dress..." His crimson eyes rose to meet hers, his gaze becoming more serious. "And you've found me my dear. Glad to see you made it out of that...situation from when we last met."

Kashta grimaced slightly, then shrugged to hide her discomfort. "As am I. I don't normally travel in Tarantia by myself any longer...and when I do, I take care to be less noticeable." Her head tilted as she paused a moment, then went on, "I have something to ask of you, a favor of sorts, if you would."

Kanlar's lips turned up as her words registered. "What is it you need from me?"

She smiled in return, relaxing, This man she knew...this was a man she could work with, because he was always looking out for himself. Much like her.

"Perhaps we could sit down and discuss it...?" At his nod she turned and led the way to a table, giving an extra sway to her hips.

No reason she shouldn't use all of her assets, after all.

[miaa]

She had felt this heavy foreboding all day. Perhaps a storm was coming. The cabin was stifling so she had moved to the deck to await her master. Several times she had picked up her flute and then put it down. It was no time for music……or sleep. Her dreams were restless. People from her past weaving in and out of them. The cruelties she had witnessed and experienced…….tortures, whippings and other evils. Evils so depraved they should never be told.

She was safe now. Her Master has promised her no harm would come to her and she would not be sold again. But..but what if something should happen to him? He was more than just a trader. She understood that but not exactly what he did. Sometimes he returned bloodied but they were not his wounds.

The dark was drawing in. The bustle on the dock slowing as the men stowed the gear and readied themselves for another night in the port city. The lanterns were flickering on and she could see the Red Hand Guards move silently up and down the alleys.

But where was he? Did she dare to slip out and try and find him? She shivered as a cold chill touched her neck. Her encounter in the jungle had left her wary of leaving the safety of the ship. The man was evil ,on that she had no doubt. He stank of it. She lifted her small face and sniffed deeply of the city, Tortage stank of it .

[miaa]

It was grotesque! Keti could see that it had once been a man….but was a man no longer. It growled and bared its teeth at them. She turned to the man beside her horror etched on her face….”You..you did this?
But..why?"

The creature once more threw itself against the bar with scream filled with both pain and hate.
“Meet Sheyaza” he turned and looked at the creature almost with a fondness…a gentleness.

And she knew she would be next.

[RogueLion]

Originally Posted by miaa She had felt this heavy foreboding all day. Perhaps a storm was coming. The cabin was stifling so she had moved to the deck to await her master. Several times she had picked up her flute and then put it down. It was no time for music……or sleep. Her dreams were restless. People from her past weaving in and out of them. The cruelties she had witnessed and experienced…….tortures, whippings and other evils. Evils so depraved they should never be told. She was safe now. Her Master has promised her no harm would come to her and she would not be sold again. But..but what if something should happen to him? He was more than just a trader. She understood that but not exactly what he did. Sometimes he returned bloodied but they were not his wounds. The dark was drawing in. The bustle on the dock slowing as the men stowed the gear and readied themselves for another night in the port city. The lanterns were flickering on and she could see the Red Hand Guards move silently up and down the alleys. But where was he? Did she dare to slip out and try and find him? She shivered as a cold chill touched her neck. Her encounter in the jungle had left her wary of leaving the safety of the ship. The man was evil ,on that she had no doubt. He stank of it. She lifted her small face and sniffed deeply of the city, Tortage stank of it .

The jib snapped briskly as the cutter heeled over, beating to windward. Se’te’kaa whistled in open admiration as her bow slid to starboard with remarkable agility and grinned up at the ship’s captain.

“Ha ha you like her, Master Se’te’kaa?!” the stocky man bellowed over the gusting beam wind. The cutter shuddered as she shouldered against the chop and came about, and Se’te’kaa reached deftly for a stay to keep his balance.

“She is nimble, Captain but how does she run?” He called up. “Between Strom’s blockade and the Sunken Rum shoals, you will have little room for such clever tricks my friend!”

“Neigh ye worry, Master! She’ll run that ole bugger’s blockade as long as we catch the tide right!”

He then proceeded to put the boat – and her crew – through their paces, pushing them hard as he tried to impress his potential client. It was a perfect day for it, with a stiff wind plucking spray from the tops of the waves and tossing it up for the late afternoon to spark. Under normal circumstances, Se’te’kaa would have lost himself in the rhythmic cadence of command and acknowledgement and the truly beautiful performance of the cutter.

But these were not normal circumstances, and he was troubled. Things had just begun to come together for them in Tortage when he received word from Kanlar seeking his help. “Persons of interest” he had called them. Well if they had a reason to run from the necromancer or his friends,that made them interesting to his superiors as well. So he had informed his people to keep an eye out, “wake up the spider” as the priest, Temsik, liked to call it and to bring them in quietly if possible. He would ascertain their value and pass the word to the Council of Shadows and await their decision. He would have to handle Kanlar very carefully, but given the man’s business in Old Tarantia, Se’te’kaa did not expect to see him in this shithole anytime soon.

By the time they returned to the harbor, he had managed to convince himself they would be able to manage the fugitive problem without too much disruption, but, much to the captain’s dismay, his mood had grown steadily more sullen, until by the time the cutter drifted into its berth, Se’te’kaa had grown completely silent and he, the captain, was convinced he had somehow offended the man. He could not know that, having moved past the fugitives, Se’te’kaa’s mind had returned to worry a much darker wound. The woman he had seen in his vision, the one with the merciless green eyes. The one Khatt had named….

“Lonely, sailor?” The familiar, seductive voice pulled him from his reverie and he looked up to see a shapely woman standing on the dock, leaning out over the railing and taking full advantage of her low neckline. Despite his preoccupation, he managed a crooked smile and obliged her with a long, deliberate look.

“Hello, Soukie. What news?” He lifted his eyes to meet hers and she straightened somewhat at the clouds she saw gathering in them. Her voice lost a touch of its sultry swagger as she caught his mood.

“Flies in the web, m’lord. Temsik is bringing them in at the Dog as we speak.”

[RogueLion]

Originally Posted by RogueLion As her tongue touched the damp wall, she heard - and felt - a muffled "whump" that registered in her ears but which she also felt through the stone bench beneath her, almost as if the floor had jumped. Chunks of rock rattled loose from the ceiling above her, followed by a few small, hissing showers of dirt. The thing she had heard down the tunnel gave a startled shriek but went promptly quiet as if listening. Several moments of tense silence passed and then the sound came again - it was somewhere above her but seemed closer now. More small pieces of the ceiling and a dry rain of stone dust fell around her and she could now feel a faint vibration in her feet. The thing in the tunnel suddenly erupted in a bizarre, terrified caterwauling, so loud she was forced to cover her ears. The vibration in her feet grew more intense and she immediately became aware of another sound, building quickly - like distant thunder that, rather than fade away, rolled closer and louder until it drowned out even the creature's piercing screams... And then all was still. The thunder ceased and the screams ended, and the waiting silence of her cell returned, but now the air had a dead, weighted feeling to it. The low light that had been creeping through the window was gone, leaving her in perfect darkness. And the beast began to scream again......

Ghozra wetted the small stick of teakwood and dipped it into the bowl of dark brown paste. Enough of the substance stuck to the wet wood to coat it and he drew it out, twirling it slowly between his fingertips as he blew softly on it, causing the paste to harden in just a few moments. He made three more sticks just like this one, then slipped them into a pouch, picked up the torch sitting next to him, and walked to the doorway of the tiny hut. He turned and surveyed the room briefly before leaving: this was not an act of nostalgia – he was merely ensuring that he had not left anything important behind. He had always known this moment would come - had planned very carefully for it actually – and while Ghozra was many things, sentimental was not one of them.

He coughed quietly and moved as quickly as the pain in his joints allowed, stepping around the side of the hut to where a narrow game trail took him circuitously up the side of the cliff behind his hut. It was slow going: the trail was muddy from the recent rainfall, and parts of it were obstructed by small landslides and here and there a toppled rubber tree. Eventually, however, he arrived at a point where the trail cut back along the cliff face, perhaps twenty feet above the hut. There was a raw gash in the green jungle canopy here, where a large section of the hill behind his home had broken loose in a mudslide to expose the rock beneath, like part of a skull whose flesh had been torn away.

The gleaming black rock was split by jagged, lichen-coated gashes in many places, some of which he had discovered some time ago ran fairly deep. Two of these gashes had ropes leading from them coated with the same paste he had applied to the teakwood sticks earlier; from the ground, they blended seamlessly with the fat vines and serpentine roots that comprised the bulk of the jungle tapestry. Stuffed inside each crevice were small casks of the powder used to make the paste; the ropes had been fed through a hole in the lid of each water-tight cask and then the hole and the rope were caulked with pitch.

As he reached the two ropes, a wracking spasm of coughing bent him over double for several moments. When it finally subsided, he fished one of the teakwood strips from his pouch, dragged the coated end along a rough rock, and grunted as the end burst into a tiny flame. He touched the burning taper to his torch and was momentarily lost in the eager appetite of the flames. For as long as he could remember, fire had fascinated him – had called to him with the soft, seductive voice of a mistress. And long ago he had answered. It had led him down many bleak, desperate roads, to places where man was not meant to tread, and souls were the principal coin. Fire was a cruel, greedy lover, and those who guarded her dark secrets were no less so. Ghozra had learned many of those secrets and eventually returned to walk among the living, but his debts as a result were heavy, onerous, and writ with blood.

Another coughing fit broke his reverie and brought him back to his current purpose. He held the torch to the end of one of the ropes for a few moments until it suddenly sparked, just as the teakwood taper he'd used had. It flashed and sputtered, white hot, and then the flame began traveling along the rope, greedily consuming the dried paste as it went. It was moving faster than he'd anticipated and the first flame had nearly disappeared into its crevice before he'd managed to light the second rope. As soon as he was certain it had caught, he dropped the torch and moved as quickly as he could down the path, back into the jungle. He'd only made it some twenty paces when the first cask went off with a muffled "whump". He turned back to watch, struggling to hold his breath and stave off the urgent scratching in his lungs.

Smoke poured from the first crevice and he fancied he heard cracking, but he couldn't be sure. Several small rocks had rattled loose from higher up the hill and were clattering and bouncing their way down the cliff face. He followed the trajectory of one larger rock as it tumbled clumsily through space, heading directly for the roof of what had been his home for these past -

BOOOM! For whatever reason, the second cask exploded with much greater force and enough power to resonate in the ground where he stood. Several birds erupted skyward from the surrounding canopy and the entire hillside shuddered from the impact. Sudden, loud cracks snapped the air and, to his delight, a massive section of the cliff face broke loose above the ledge and began tumbling downwards with a thunderous roar. In seconds, his tiny hut was buried beneath rock, mud and trees .

But more importantly, the entrance to the caves hidden behind the hut was buried as well, and the secrets they contained hidden from prying eyes. Satisfied, he worked his way back down the trail, picked his way carefully around the now-silent landslide, and followed the small stream that ran beside his former home. Several hundred yards later the jungle gave way to a broad beach, where the stream eventually spilled into the sea. He turned northeast and followed the rocky shoreline, wondering how the Vessel and Sheyaza were handling this new turn of events.