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<blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 7343159" data-attributes="member: 11697"><p>“What the F**K?!!!” Florian screamed out as the flagstones flickered and vanished below her feet and she began to fall.</p><p></p><p>Several hundred feet away, Shemeska walked with her arms folded before her at her waist, her hands obscured by her gown’s long sleeves and her fingers clutched tight about the preternaturally cold length of the Shadow Sorcelled Key. She briefly smiled to herself as Florian’s screams and the crowd’s subsequent chorus of shouts rose up. She never bothered to turn and look back. She didn’t need to.</p><p></p><p>“Colcook,” The fiend said, matter-of-factly, “mirror please.”</p><p></p><p>Without knowing the reason for his Mistress’s request, Colcook hefted the mirror and held it up, expertly tilted such that she could see herself, which was in most instances precisely her intent and design. This time however, she clearly desired otherwise.</p><p></p><p>“Slightly to the left,” She chuckled and watched with delight as the view shifted to the street behind her, fading in clarity with each step further away from the scene of her crime and her breaking of Sigil’s fundamental laws. With a single mental commend to the enchanted mirror she magnified the view to grant a view of the cleric’s predicament and hopeful doom with perfect detail. With luck, she’d watch the mortal plummet to her doom, with the hoi polloi of Sigil none the wiser as to her power.</p><p></p><p>Below the screaming cleric, the open space crackled with black lines of flickering electricity as the portal’s destination yawned large and drew into cohesive form. While none of the assembled and terrified crowd had yet bothered to actually cast a spell to divine the portal’s far destination, and certainly not Florian herself, the vista of an endless ocean of swarming insects far below, broken only by rare spirals of glassy rock and the almost indistinct forms of vrocks and other tanar’ri spoke of a particularly inhospitable layer of the Abyss.</p><p></p><p>This was not the first time that a portal had spontaneously opened below Florian, and this time she was prepared for the event, at least as much as she could be. With a snarl of rage and a screaming invocation to Tempus, she reached out and grabbed the first thing she could, which was not -as in past situations- the ragged street-edge of the bound space and its active portal therein, but in the present moment the exaggeratedly long trailing sleeve and robe train of one of Oridi Malefin’s former Dusties. The ghast, far more limber and with its descent into undeath in search of True Death, far swifter than it had been in life, stumbled backwards and cried out in alarm before sinking its claws into a nearby post and holding itself fast as Florian wrenched herself back onto her feet on solid ground.</p><p></p><p>Hissing and snarling a curse before stifling its surprised anger as its eyes went wide at the yawning portal and just what the tugging upon its clothing had been about, the former Dustman backed away. A dozen other members of the crowd scattered even more swiftly as they saw Florian rise to her feet and brandish her holy symbol and begin to chant.</p><p></p><p>Distantly, staring at her mirror and ostensibly picking and preening at her own reflection, the Marauder quirked an eyebrow as a smile of anticipation passed across her muzzle. Let the mortal try.</p><p></p><p>“BY TEMPUS I SWEAR THAT…” Florian bellowed, holding her holy symbol high and her free hand out and accusatory, thoughts poised to fly to her god and smite the fiend casually walking away with her thrice-damned mirror and gaggle of tieflings.</p><p></p><p>She never finished her spell.</p><p></p><p>Acting purely on preternatural instinct and not even looking before she dove to the side, Fyrehowl barreled into Florian and tackled her to the ground. The force of the lupinal’s body slamming into her force the air from her lungs and jarred the holy symbol from her hands to go clattering with a series of metallic pings across the cobblestones.</p><p></p><p>All was silent for a profoundly long moment as Florian inhaled and looked up at Fyrehowl still atop her, pinning her to the ground. The cipher’s eyes were wide with shock as she realized what she’d actually done, and Florian looked up with defeat and disappointed rage as she realized just as much, but any thoughts on her part of struggling back up and taking a second attempt ended as the swirling portal only inches from where they lay abruptly slammed shut, followed moment’s later by the subtle tremors of a Cagequake.</p><p></p><p>“F*CK!” Florian wailed, while nearly a block away by that point, Shemeska’s ears perked and she began to chuckle.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">****</p><p></p><p></p><p>A half hour later, back at the Portal Jammer, things had not improved.</p><p></p><p>Broken glass and spilt ale decorated the floor and rear wall of the tavern’s back room from where Florian had hurled multiple mugs and steins out of complete and utter screaming frustration. Each had been hurled with its own unique and obscene invocation against all things ‘loth and all things related to the Marauder.</p><p></p><p>“Seriously, she can probably hear you when you do that.” Tristol muttered, considering it good advice, even as he scanned the room’s ambient magic for any sign of such but thankfully coming up dry. Next to him, Nisha sat with her tail twitching fretfully, her eyes flitting between her friend and the growing mess.</p><p></p><p>“GOOD!” Florian snarled, just before slurping down the last of a shot glass of whiskey and launching the empty tumbler at the far wall where it splintered in a storm of broken glass to join its previously fallen comrades below.</p><p></p><p>Toras winced.</p><p></p><p>“She’s gone too far Toras,” Florian spat, her genuine anger not being helped by the alcohol and not by the fact that Clueless had distinctly cut her off from any more ten minutes earlier. “She’s gone way too f*cking far this time. She knows exactly what she’s doing and the b*tch is undoubtedly getting off on this.”</p><p></p><p>Those of her companions who’d gathered to hear her out and at the very least try to hold her back from doing anything rash exchanged glances. It wasn’t as if she was wrong at any point, it was just that the fiend was effectively untouchable in the political climate that she’s carefully cultivated about herself over the course of centuries or millennia. Outside of doing the most stupid of actions, they didn’t have a genuine recourse, and perhaps that was what the ‘loth was purposefully goading them towards.</p><p></p><p>“Tempus help me,” Florian’s face erupted in a stoic grimace as she thumbed her holy symbol, “But I swear to you and my god that I will walk to the Fortune’s Wheel and straight up throttle Shemeska the f*cking Marauder if she tries that sh*t one more time.”</p><p></p><p>“That’s what she wants…” Fyrehowl sighed, adding little else as even the Cadence of the Planes was silent about any option for recourse at the present time. “That’s why I tackled you. I don’t want to see you dead.”</p><p></p><p>“She’ll stop!” Toras pleaded, knowing full well that he’d be watching his friend walk off to her death if she actually tried to kill the fiend, “All you have to f*cking do is make a damn hollow apology! Appeal to her bloated, god-like ego and she’ll stop! That’s it!”</p><p></p><p>“F*ck her Toras,” Florian’s response was cold and harsh. “I’ll die before I give her that satisfaction.”</p><p></p><p>“Please don’t die…” Nisha lamented.</p><p></p><p>“I’ll go with you!” The fighter insisted, trying to find some way to actually get his friend to agree, not wanting to see her commit suicide if she actually followed through on her threat. “I’ll do most of the talking! I’ll pay for any bribes it takes to get in to actually speak with her… and it probably will, given how it went last time.”</p><p></p><p>Florian snarled and looked away, not wanting to temper her rage with the looks in her friends’ eyes. While she wouldn’t mind dying if it meant breaking a few of the Marauder’s teeth with a few sharp kicks to the face, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to abandon the people who’d become her virtual family. All around her, they stared at her with genuine worry and genuine care, something all too often missing in the City of Doors.</p><p></p><p>“Damn it!” Florian slammed her fist down on the table, wincing as she bruised bones in the process. “I care too much about you all to let myself do what I damn well want to do.”</p><p></p><p>Crying, Florian slumped down into her chair. Rage would be the death of her, but guilt and love wouldn’t let her get to that point ever so easily as perhaps the Marauder hoped.</p><p></p><p>“Fine…” The cleric hissed through clenched teeth, “I’ll make the damned apology.”</p><p></p><p>She never made the apology.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">*****</p><p></p><p></p><p>The half-light of Sigil’s waning afternoon did its best to shine through the greasy, grey-green clouds that drifted over the Lady’s Ward, casting an unhealthy pallor over the rooftop dining room of the Cutter’s Vineyard. Decorated on all sides by ornate iron latticework cast to resemble grape vines, the city’s ambient flora had years ago added a touch of irony as razorvine now snarled through it all, providing for a more private dining experience to those wealthy enough to afford the restaurant’s menu.</p><p></p><p>At the present moment only a dozen customers sat there, sipping wine, grazing on rare and expensive delicacies, and enjoying the separation from the plebian throngs far below. Half of the dining room’s floor space was held empty, reserved for the occupant of a single table set with its own distinct colors, distinctly non-silver silverware, and an oversized, throne-like chair for the ‘loth that sat there.</p><p></p><p>“Tell the chef that I’ll have whatever she feels is appropriate to the season, the available stocks, and her own whimsy, with the only caveat being that it appropriately matches the profile of the wine that I’m presenting drinking.”</p><p></p><p>The Marauder gave what might plausibly pass with a curt half-smile before she looked away and stared off into the distance, her mind preoccupied with the news from Helekanalaith’s lapdog. Idly her clawed-fingers reached down to lift a crystalline goblet filled to the brim with the wine vintage most recently stolen from the business interests of the late Muriov Garianis, and although her mind was elsewhere, her groomer-guards remained as alert as ever. Flanking her at a polite distance, the trio of tieflings ensured that her glass remained filled, her hair immaculate despite any breeze, and that none of the surrounding riffraff, no matter their wealth, intruded upon her afternoon respite.</p><p></p><p>The fiend had evidently had time for a wardrobe change since the Council meeting earlier in the day, and at present she sat in a gown of black velvet with faint, burnout patterns visible in just the right light, and with deep blue silk sashes and lines of sapphires woven into the fabric that almost brought to the mind the pattern of the iconic outfit of the figure in her mind: Shylara the Manged.</p><p></p><p>Shemeska’s claws tapped on her wine glass, setting the crystal to ring with an irritating cadence just loud enough to draw the unhappy attention of the other rooftop diners, but one glance at the fiend’s well-armed guards –to say nothing of realizing the source of the sound– put an end to such stares. The irritated tapping was of course a direct reaction to the fiend’s present –and some would say lingering– obsession with her former apprentice, lover, consort, and present rival Shylara the Manged.</p><p></p><p>“You continue to have the worst timing…” The Marauder hissed, her mind a blizzard of thoughts on how Shylara’s release would change things. </p><p></p><p>Minutes passed and even as the chef appeared in person to present the first course, it was placed before her without anything more than an acknowledging nod and eventually Colcook gestured the clearly terrified chef to leave without getting any response on taste or approval as the Marauder’s mind was elsewhere, stewing on something beyond the food, no matter how fine and personalized it happened to be.</p><p></p><p>The ‘loth’s expression shifted between sneering, smirking, open wonder, and an occasional hint of lust as she flitted from thought to thought. The bitch’s reappearance upon the stage was an annoyance, and at present she remained uncomfortably unaware of the circumstances surrounding her freedom. Did the Keeper release her? Did the Ebon himself see fit to do so? Did Vorkannis perhaps force Helekanalaith to do it? Each situation would hold a meaning of its own. Still her reappearance did allow for the amusement of tormenting her again. Perhaps the delivery of a statue in her appearance and a personal note regarding fond memories, lewd acts, and that she looked better cast in stone than in the flesh, which in the absence of magic and perfume certainly had less of a smell of festering puss and stale blood as well.</p><p></p><p>A slow smile crossed the Marauder’s muzzle as she smirked, delighted with herself.</p><p></p><p>Halfway between thoughts of whispering and insult and blowing a kiss to the former student of hers, Shemeska pursed her lips and blew at a strand of hair that had drifted from its proper place at the edge of her razorvine crown and fallen across her muzzle. Without so much as a word from the fiend, one of her tieflings stepped forward with golden tweezers and delicately placed the strand back in the precise place it was intended. As if nothing had happened, the Marauder began her meal of poached kobold brain in a broth of lemongrass, citron, rice wine, and the chef’s own tears.</p><p></p><p>“Greetings my beautiful monster.”</p><p></p><p>In the blink of an eye three blades were drawn and at the throat of the woman that stood before the Marauder’s table. A tiefling beggar with filthy, matted hair interspersed with black, iron-hard quills like those of a howler, her flesh displayed the signs of extensive torture: burns, razor marks from the flensing of her flesh, and the ugly depressions of acid spattered across her face and which had opened holes in her left cheek such that her black and rotting teeth could be seen.</p><p></p><p>The Marauder’s nose twitched at the reek of unwashed mortal flesh, but neither did she sneer, nor fly into a rage, or simply order the woman to be killed and hurled off the roof of the present establishment that she in fact partially owned along with the lives and half the souls of its employees. Instead, without even a frown or twitch of her nose, she calmly and delicately put down her golden knife and fork and dabbed her lips with a napkin.</p><p></p><p>Beneath the woman’s odor of sweat, pain, fear and filth, the familiar scents of Khin-Oin, Hopeless, and the Lower Ward painted a picture of her journey from the Wasting Tower to Shemeska’s gilded Cage. Beyond that of course, only one creature had ever referred to her by that specific name and title: the Oinoloth himself.</p><p></p><p>None of Shemeska’s guards had seen the tiefling ascend the stairs from the restaurant’s main dining room, nor slip past the guards posted there at the bottom of the stairwell. It didn’t seem possible that she’d scaled the sheer wall and four stories of brick and slate, graced only by a scrabble of razorvine either, let alone manage to drag herself through the razorvine-encrusted iron faux-vineyard that ringed the rooftop. It wasn’t obvious how she’d appeared there at the Marauder’s private table when her smell alone would have given sign of her approaching presence at least a hundred feet away if not more, but still, there she was, standing before the King of the Crosstrade and smiling.</p><p></p><p>“Put your blades away and let her speak.” The Marauder waved her hand and then placed it on the table to join her other, suddenly folded and patient for a creature neither known for patience or the slightest drop of humility.</p><p></p><p>The tiefling woman smiled and curtseyed with an overdrawn elegance that clashed with the rags she wore and the utter abandon displayed to her own body.</p><p></p><p>“I greet you Lady Shemeska in the name of the Master of the Fourfold Furnace, the Oinoloth of the Waste, and the Rightful Overlord of the Scarlet Prison. Vorkannis the Ebon sends you his regards, tinged with regret that he could not visit you here himself, in the flesh, in person.”</p><p></p><p>The tiefling shuddered as she pronounced the Oinoloth’s name, biting her tongue as if in shame for uttering a blasphemy. Fresh blood marked her teeth and lips, the former visible through the holes in her cheek. Reflexively, her tail coiled about her right leg and a stream of urine trickled down her left.</p><p></p><p>“I serve the Oinoloth in every way he desires.” The Marauder’s eyes were locked upon the messenger’s, acutely aware of the glow now flickering within the doomed mortal’s pupils. The radiance of magic seething within her battered flesh and coiling like a devouring serpent¬¬¬ –Nidhogg at the roots of the World Tree in microcosm– told the fiend all she needed to know. “What message does my Oinoloth have for me?”</p><p></p><p>“The Master of the Lower Planes desires your presence within Khin-Oin.”</p><p></p><p>Shemeska blinked, unconsciously biting her lip.</p><p></p><p>“Travel alone and leave His most recent gift to you within Sigil.” The tiefling smiled, blood upon her teeth, then abruptly speaking the next phrase of her instructions with the utmost calm and not in planar common, but in perfect, horrific Baern, “<strong>Under no circumstances is the Shadow Sorceled Key to leave the City of Doors.</strong>”</p><p></p><p>The Marauder blinked at the sudden utterance of the language from a mortal mouth, a mortal mouth now bleeding from its gums and blood blossoming in the tiefling’s glowing sclera from suddenly ruptured blood vessels. The words themselves were killing her.</p><p></p><p>“I understand.” Reflexively her thighs clenched upon the length of the Key where it lay flat against her flesh, upon her thigh, hung from her waist by an adamantine chain.</p><p></p><p>“Bring <strong>nothing</strong> but your flesh, beautiful monster. Nothing.” The tiefling smiled even as light seeped from her eyes and now her mouth and nostrils. “He awaits you and you alone within a chamber directly below and twelve levels down from that in which you and He first met. Arrive there within the next twelve hours. The Wheels turn.”</p><p></p><p>At the moment the tiefling ceased talking, the Marauder’s tongue flitted across her lips, whispering a phrase as two fingers gesticulated in a practiced, unconscious movement to raise an invisible barrier between herself, her meal, and the tablecloth and the tiefling as the latter exploded like an overripe melon dropped from the rooftop. Blood and viscera erupted across the rooftop in a thirty foot radius, coating the ground and the Marauder’s groomer guards, leaving only her and her food intact as a fine red mist settled across an even wider area. </p><p></p><p>Utterly uncaring for the sudden screams from the other diners, some of them spattered from the dead tiefling’s incinerated remains, Shemeska knew her next course of action. She no longer had any desire or intention of finishing her meal or even considering her earlier thoughts. Greater things called.</p><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: center">*****</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shemeska, post: 7343159, member: 11697"] “What the F**K?!!!” Florian screamed out as the flagstones flickered and vanished below her feet and she began to fall. Several hundred feet away, Shemeska walked with her arms folded before her at her waist, her hands obscured by her gown’s long sleeves and her fingers clutched tight about the preternaturally cold length of the Shadow Sorcelled Key. She briefly smiled to herself as Florian’s screams and the crowd’s subsequent chorus of shouts rose up. She never bothered to turn and look back. She didn’t need to. “Colcook,” The fiend said, matter-of-factly, “mirror please.” Without knowing the reason for his Mistress’s request, Colcook hefted the mirror and held it up, expertly tilted such that she could see herself, which was in most instances precisely her intent and design. This time however, she clearly desired otherwise. “Slightly to the left,” She chuckled and watched with delight as the view shifted to the street behind her, fading in clarity with each step further away from the scene of her crime and her breaking of Sigil’s fundamental laws. With a single mental commend to the enchanted mirror she magnified the view to grant a view of the cleric’s predicament and hopeful doom with perfect detail. With luck, she’d watch the mortal plummet to her doom, with the hoi polloi of Sigil none the wiser as to her power. Below the screaming cleric, the open space crackled with black lines of flickering electricity as the portal’s destination yawned large and drew into cohesive form. While none of the assembled and terrified crowd had yet bothered to actually cast a spell to divine the portal’s far destination, and certainly not Florian herself, the vista of an endless ocean of swarming insects far below, broken only by rare spirals of glassy rock and the almost indistinct forms of vrocks and other tanar’ri spoke of a particularly inhospitable layer of the Abyss. This was not the first time that a portal had spontaneously opened below Florian, and this time she was prepared for the event, at least as much as she could be. With a snarl of rage and a screaming invocation to Tempus, she reached out and grabbed the first thing she could, which was not -as in past situations- the ragged street-edge of the bound space and its active portal therein, but in the present moment the exaggeratedly long trailing sleeve and robe train of one of Oridi Malefin’s former Dusties. The ghast, far more limber and with its descent into undeath in search of True Death, far swifter than it had been in life, stumbled backwards and cried out in alarm before sinking its claws into a nearby post and holding itself fast as Florian wrenched herself back onto her feet on solid ground. Hissing and snarling a curse before stifling its surprised anger as its eyes went wide at the yawning portal and just what the tugging upon its clothing had been about, the former Dustman backed away. A dozen other members of the crowd scattered even more swiftly as they saw Florian rise to her feet and brandish her holy symbol and begin to chant. Distantly, staring at her mirror and ostensibly picking and preening at her own reflection, the Marauder quirked an eyebrow as a smile of anticipation passed across her muzzle. Let the mortal try. “BY TEMPUS I SWEAR THAT…” Florian bellowed, holding her holy symbol high and her free hand out and accusatory, thoughts poised to fly to her god and smite the fiend casually walking away with her thrice-damned mirror and gaggle of tieflings. She never finished her spell. Acting purely on preternatural instinct and not even looking before she dove to the side, Fyrehowl barreled into Florian and tackled her to the ground. The force of the lupinal’s body slamming into her force the air from her lungs and jarred the holy symbol from her hands to go clattering with a series of metallic pings across the cobblestones. All was silent for a profoundly long moment as Florian inhaled and looked up at Fyrehowl still atop her, pinning her to the ground. The cipher’s eyes were wide with shock as she realized what she’d actually done, and Florian looked up with defeat and disappointed rage as she realized just as much, but any thoughts on her part of struggling back up and taking a second attempt ended as the swirling portal only inches from where they lay abruptly slammed shut, followed moment’s later by the subtle tremors of a Cagequake. “F*CK!” Florian wailed, while nearly a block away by that point, Shemeska’s ears perked and she began to chuckle. [center]****[/center] A half hour later, back at the Portal Jammer, things had not improved. Broken glass and spilt ale decorated the floor and rear wall of the tavern’s back room from where Florian had hurled multiple mugs and steins out of complete and utter screaming frustration. Each had been hurled with its own unique and obscene invocation against all things ‘loth and all things related to the Marauder. “Seriously, she can probably hear you when you do that.” Tristol muttered, considering it good advice, even as he scanned the room’s ambient magic for any sign of such but thankfully coming up dry. Next to him, Nisha sat with her tail twitching fretfully, her eyes flitting between her friend and the growing mess. “GOOD!” Florian snarled, just before slurping down the last of a shot glass of whiskey and launching the empty tumbler at the far wall where it splintered in a storm of broken glass to join its previously fallen comrades below. Toras winced. “She’s gone too far Toras,” Florian spat, her genuine anger not being helped by the alcohol and not by the fact that Clueless had distinctly cut her off from any more ten minutes earlier. “She’s gone way too f*cking far this time. She knows exactly what she’s doing and the b*tch is undoubtedly getting off on this.” Those of her companions who’d gathered to hear her out and at the very least try to hold her back from doing anything rash exchanged glances. It wasn’t as if she was wrong at any point, it was just that the fiend was effectively untouchable in the political climate that she’s carefully cultivated about herself over the course of centuries or millennia. Outside of doing the most stupid of actions, they didn’t have a genuine recourse, and perhaps that was what the ‘loth was purposefully goading them towards. “Tempus help me,” Florian’s face erupted in a stoic grimace as she thumbed her holy symbol, “But I swear to you and my god that I will walk to the Fortune’s Wheel and straight up throttle Shemeska the f*cking Marauder if she tries that sh*t one more time.” “That’s what she wants…” Fyrehowl sighed, adding little else as even the Cadence of the Planes was silent about any option for recourse at the present time. “That’s why I tackled you. I don’t want to see you dead.” “She’ll stop!” Toras pleaded, knowing full well that he’d be watching his friend walk off to her death if she actually tried to kill the fiend, “All you have to f*cking do is make a damn hollow apology! Appeal to her bloated, god-like ego and she’ll stop! That’s it!” “F*ck her Toras,” Florian’s response was cold and harsh. “I’ll die before I give her that satisfaction.” “Please don’t die…” Nisha lamented. “I’ll go with you!” The fighter insisted, trying to find some way to actually get his friend to agree, not wanting to see her commit suicide if she actually followed through on her threat. “I’ll do most of the talking! I’ll pay for any bribes it takes to get in to actually speak with her… and it probably will, given how it went last time.” Florian snarled and looked away, not wanting to temper her rage with the looks in her friends’ eyes. While she wouldn’t mind dying if it meant breaking a few of the Marauder’s teeth with a few sharp kicks to the face, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to abandon the people who’d become her virtual family. All around her, they stared at her with genuine worry and genuine care, something all too often missing in the City of Doors. “Damn it!” Florian slammed her fist down on the table, wincing as she bruised bones in the process. “I care too much about you all to let myself do what I damn well want to do.” Crying, Florian slumped down into her chair. Rage would be the death of her, but guilt and love wouldn’t let her get to that point ever so easily as perhaps the Marauder hoped. “Fine…” The cleric hissed through clenched teeth, “I’ll make the damned apology.” She never made the apology. [center]*****[/center] The half-light of Sigil’s waning afternoon did its best to shine through the greasy, grey-green clouds that drifted over the Lady’s Ward, casting an unhealthy pallor over the rooftop dining room of the Cutter’s Vineyard. Decorated on all sides by ornate iron latticework cast to resemble grape vines, the city’s ambient flora had years ago added a touch of irony as razorvine now snarled through it all, providing for a more private dining experience to those wealthy enough to afford the restaurant’s menu. At the present moment only a dozen customers sat there, sipping wine, grazing on rare and expensive delicacies, and enjoying the separation from the plebian throngs far below. Half of the dining room’s floor space was held empty, reserved for the occupant of a single table set with its own distinct colors, distinctly non-silver silverware, and an oversized, throne-like chair for the ‘loth that sat there. “Tell the chef that I’ll have whatever she feels is appropriate to the season, the available stocks, and her own whimsy, with the only caveat being that it appropriately matches the profile of the wine that I’m presenting drinking.” The Marauder gave what might plausibly pass with a curt half-smile before she looked away and stared off into the distance, her mind preoccupied with the news from Helekanalaith’s lapdog. Idly her clawed-fingers reached down to lift a crystalline goblet filled to the brim with the wine vintage most recently stolen from the business interests of the late Muriov Garianis, and although her mind was elsewhere, her groomer-guards remained as alert as ever. Flanking her at a polite distance, the trio of tieflings ensured that her glass remained filled, her hair immaculate despite any breeze, and that none of the surrounding riffraff, no matter their wealth, intruded upon her afternoon respite. The fiend had evidently had time for a wardrobe change since the Council meeting earlier in the day, and at present she sat in a gown of black velvet with faint, burnout patterns visible in just the right light, and with deep blue silk sashes and lines of sapphires woven into the fabric that almost brought to the mind the pattern of the iconic outfit of the figure in her mind: Shylara the Manged. Shemeska’s claws tapped on her wine glass, setting the crystal to ring with an irritating cadence just loud enough to draw the unhappy attention of the other rooftop diners, but one glance at the fiend’s well-armed guards –to say nothing of realizing the source of the sound– put an end to such stares. The irritated tapping was of course a direct reaction to the fiend’s present –and some would say lingering– obsession with her former apprentice, lover, consort, and present rival Shylara the Manged. “You continue to have the worst timing…” The Marauder hissed, her mind a blizzard of thoughts on how Shylara’s release would change things. Minutes passed and even as the chef appeared in person to present the first course, it was placed before her without anything more than an acknowledging nod and eventually Colcook gestured the clearly terrified chef to leave without getting any response on taste or approval as the Marauder’s mind was elsewhere, stewing on something beyond the food, no matter how fine and personalized it happened to be. The ‘loth’s expression shifted between sneering, smirking, open wonder, and an occasional hint of lust as she flitted from thought to thought. The bitch’s reappearance upon the stage was an annoyance, and at present she remained uncomfortably unaware of the circumstances surrounding her freedom. Did the Keeper release her? Did the Ebon himself see fit to do so? Did Vorkannis perhaps force Helekanalaith to do it? Each situation would hold a meaning of its own. Still her reappearance did allow for the amusement of tormenting her again. Perhaps the delivery of a statue in her appearance and a personal note regarding fond memories, lewd acts, and that she looked better cast in stone than in the flesh, which in the absence of magic and perfume certainly had less of a smell of festering puss and stale blood as well. A slow smile crossed the Marauder’s muzzle as she smirked, delighted with herself. Halfway between thoughts of whispering and insult and blowing a kiss to the former student of hers, Shemeska pursed her lips and blew at a strand of hair that had drifted from its proper place at the edge of her razorvine crown and fallen across her muzzle. Without so much as a word from the fiend, one of her tieflings stepped forward with golden tweezers and delicately placed the strand back in the precise place it was intended. As if nothing had happened, the Marauder began her meal of poached kobold brain in a broth of lemongrass, citron, rice wine, and the chef’s own tears. “Greetings my beautiful monster.” In the blink of an eye three blades were drawn and at the throat of the woman that stood before the Marauder’s table. A tiefling beggar with filthy, matted hair interspersed with black, iron-hard quills like those of a howler, her flesh displayed the signs of extensive torture: burns, razor marks from the flensing of her flesh, and the ugly depressions of acid spattered across her face and which had opened holes in her left cheek such that her black and rotting teeth could be seen. The Marauder’s nose twitched at the reek of unwashed mortal flesh, but neither did she sneer, nor fly into a rage, or simply order the woman to be killed and hurled off the roof of the present establishment that she in fact partially owned along with the lives and half the souls of its employees. Instead, without even a frown or twitch of her nose, she calmly and delicately put down her golden knife and fork and dabbed her lips with a napkin. Beneath the woman’s odor of sweat, pain, fear and filth, the familiar scents of Khin-Oin, Hopeless, and the Lower Ward painted a picture of her journey from the Wasting Tower to Shemeska’s gilded Cage. Beyond that of course, only one creature had ever referred to her by that specific name and title: the Oinoloth himself. None of Shemeska’s guards had seen the tiefling ascend the stairs from the restaurant’s main dining room, nor slip past the guards posted there at the bottom of the stairwell. It didn’t seem possible that she’d scaled the sheer wall and four stories of brick and slate, graced only by a scrabble of razorvine either, let alone manage to drag herself through the razorvine-encrusted iron faux-vineyard that ringed the rooftop. It wasn’t obvious how she’d appeared there at the Marauder’s private table when her smell alone would have given sign of her approaching presence at least a hundred feet away if not more, but still, there she was, standing before the King of the Crosstrade and smiling. “Put your blades away and let her speak.” The Marauder waved her hand and then placed it on the table to join her other, suddenly folded and patient for a creature neither known for patience or the slightest drop of humility. The tiefling woman smiled and curtseyed with an overdrawn elegance that clashed with the rags she wore and the utter abandon displayed to her own body. “I greet you Lady Shemeska in the name of the Master of the Fourfold Furnace, the Oinoloth of the Waste, and the Rightful Overlord of the Scarlet Prison. Vorkannis the Ebon sends you his regards, tinged with regret that he could not visit you here himself, in the flesh, in person.” The tiefling shuddered as she pronounced the Oinoloth’s name, biting her tongue as if in shame for uttering a blasphemy. Fresh blood marked her teeth and lips, the former visible through the holes in her cheek. Reflexively, her tail coiled about her right leg and a stream of urine trickled down her left. “I serve the Oinoloth in every way he desires.” The Marauder’s eyes were locked upon the messenger’s, acutely aware of the glow now flickering within the doomed mortal’s pupils. The radiance of magic seething within her battered flesh and coiling like a devouring serpent¬¬¬ –Nidhogg at the roots of the World Tree in microcosm– told the fiend all she needed to know. “What message does my Oinoloth have for me?” “The Master of the Lower Planes desires your presence within Khin-Oin.” Shemeska blinked, unconsciously biting her lip. “Travel alone and leave His most recent gift to you within Sigil.” The tiefling smiled, blood upon her teeth, then abruptly speaking the next phrase of her instructions with the utmost calm and not in planar common, but in perfect, horrific Baern, “[b]Under no circumstances is the Shadow Sorceled Key to leave the City of Doors.[/b]” The Marauder blinked at the sudden utterance of the language from a mortal mouth, a mortal mouth now bleeding from its gums and blood blossoming in the tiefling’s glowing sclera from suddenly ruptured blood vessels. The words themselves were killing her. “I understand.” Reflexively her thighs clenched upon the length of the Key where it lay flat against her flesh, upon her thigh, hung from her waist by an adamantine chain. “Bring [b]nothing[/b] but your flesh, beautiful monster. Nothing.” The tiefling smiled even as light seeped from her eyes and now her mouth and nostrils. “He awaits you and you alone within a chamber directly below and twelve levels down from that in which you and He first met. Arrive there within the next twelve hours. The Wheels turn.” At the moment the tiefling ceased talking, the Marauder’s tongue flitted across her lips, whispering a phrase as two fingers gesticulated in a practiced, unconscious movement to raise an invisible barrier between herself, her meal, and the tablecloth and the tiefling as the latter exploded like an overripe melon dropped from the rooftop. Blood and viscera erupted across the rooftop in a thirty foot radius, coating the ground and the Marauder’s groomer guards, leaving only her and her food intact as a fine red mist settled across an even wider area. Utterly uncaring for the sudden screams from the other diners, some of them spattered from the dead tiefling’s incinerated remains, Shemeska knew her next course of action. She no longer had any desire or intention of finishing her meal or even considering her earlier thoughts. Greater things called. [center]*****[/center] [/QUOTE]
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Shemeska's Planescape Storyhour - (Updated 14February2024)
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