Dekaidin

The Darkness Encroaches

Observation of the every-man’s plight and its monotonous drudgery was generally a tedious affair for Lisette, but, as she knelt in the tall grass, not yet moistened by the predawn dew, she barely masked her delight as the symphony of chaos around her dilated. Cast in an amorphous halo by the full moon’s beams, the countryside, to her already exotic given her exclusivity to the city, seemed nigh numinous. A stone’s throw behind where she waited, the line of trees that formed the forest vanguard likened to a daemonic host of behemoth black sentinels. Similarly, the rustles of limb and leaf ripened in her imagination to the plaintive utterances of those eternally damned. Such sounds accented the very real and mortal ululations of terror that emanated from the train’s rear.

What attracted her wide-eyed attention the most, however, was the rearmost carriage most severely damaged by the train’s ominous stoppage. While the smog of coal readily dissipated, given the lack of a locomotive, a miasma nevertheless billowed and poured forth from the windows of the final derailed carriage. The grimy scent of oil tinged her nostrils. Someone screamed ‘Fire!’ At last, harsh radiance lunged as wicked tongues from its shattered windows and a cascade of embers exploded into the night. From where she sat, she veritably tasted the charred flesh of the souls within imprisoned.

A girlhood memory of an old wives’ tale stirred and she recited: ‘Those who die by fire will in Perdition ever burn.’

Transfixed though she was by the fiery flesh carnival and proletariat woe, an emanation of pure evil from the train’s fore invariably piqued and subsequently enraptured her interest. Tea an abandoned expectation, she resigned her post, stood, plucked up her violin case, and advanced in prim and quiet footfalls toward the gravel. There she followed the steel rail forward in pursuit of the malignant emanation. She noted, as she neared, how very dark the shadows pooled upon the ground where the locomotive ought to straddle the track. Even with the night, the darkness was uncanny. Delightful, in fact. Then a firm and unwanted hand clasped her shoulder. Confounded, she turned on her assailant and shook herself free, her upraised face, illuminated by the moonlight, pale as a corpse’s. Yet life was belied as her eyes shimmered angrily and her anemic lips twisted in contempt.

“You presume much—” she looked him up and down then, with haughty venom, spat, “—swordsman.”

“Lady,” Weiland politely inclined his head in respect, then reclaimed command of the situation, “this place isn’t safe. You need to go back to where the other passengers are.”

“Those—those commoners?” she incredulously retorted and pointed her chin derisively at the dozen or so riffraff vomited from the plebeian carriages.

“For your own safety,” Weiland insisted. “If necessary, I’ll escort you there.”

While not necessarily engaged in her surroundings at all times, she was wilily enough that she noted the implied, albeit politely unspoken, by force.

Furious as she was impotent in a physical contest with the swordsman, she peered beyond his bulky frame toward the small crowd. Even from here, the rabble stank of poverty. She did not wish to be amongst them. Confined to an asylum cell for so long, the thought of people, particularly noisy and near, unraveled the threads of her composure. Moreover, the darkness called to her. In a final effort to get her way, she stepped back from Weiland. He matched her gait and likewise stepped forward. His hand lifted, prepared to enforce his simple-minded and presumptuous wisdom. She didn’t want him to touch her again, but was too arrogant to recoil. Instead, she brought his action to a halt as she snapped, “So be it. I shall make my own way back, brave swordsman, to the safety of the mob,” her sarcasm evident. As she heeded his demand, and they stalked along their diametrically opposed trajectories, she sneered again, deliberately loud enough for him to catch her vitriol on the wind, “May the night devour your impudent soul!”

Her threat punctuated by an insidious cackle, she paused. No, she would not pretend to take safety in numbers. Instead, she flung open her violin case, grasped her instrument—its ivory exterior practically luminous in the twined radiance of orange firelight and argent moonglow—and in motions that seemed equal parts exaggerated and languished, she moved her bow over the crimson cords of her violin and afflicted those around her with a beautiful if not melodramatic dirge.

The Darkness Encroaches

Blood smudged the rim of her violin case where the skull of her caretaker struck. Now he, in his soiled white service uniform, lay as an inert heap rather than a man. Precipitously alone in an enclosed compartment furnished only by a single straight-backed padded bench, Lisette seemed not to notice, and sat immobile, her face, a mask of near catatonia, inclined ever so slightly toward the adjacent window glass, bereft of the minor luxuries of blinds or curtains, whereon her ghostly reflection obscured the scenery. Occasionally, her lips parted and her throat gave life to an inaudible murmur, ostensibly part of some ill-constrained inner dialogue.

“Ma’am?” the first-class porter ventured around the just opened door of her private, albeit compact, compartment.

At first she didn’t react. Her fingers were gracefully intertwined on her lap and her ankles were neatly crossed, the tip of one of her leather-soled slippers dangerously encroached upon by the grisly pool as it expanded across the carpeted floor. Whatever she thought she saw in the window evidently fascinated her. A moment passed. Finally the porter, indecisive and still somewhat whelmed by the scene, thought again to inquire, yet louder, when Lisette started. Her back straightened and she turned on him quite suddenly, a pale hand drawn up in front of her half-opened mouth in a muted gasp of astonishment. He, likewise startled, lurched backwards into the side hall, but quickly recovered his manly resolve. Confronted by the lady’s wide-eyed expression and passive silence, he again neared, rather abashed, and delicately probed, “Ma’am, are you unharmed?”

“Why yes,” Lisette replied, her enunciation gradual and mellow voice barely raised above a whisper, “I suppose it is nearly dinner. But no, I’m not rather hungry. Perhaps a chamomile?”

The porter frowned. The lady was obviously in shock, based on his inexpert evaluation. Eccentric at the very least. He perceived it best to not confront her with the body at her feet and, as he would with his anile grandmother, helpfully lied, “We’ve made a brief stop in the country. If you’d be so kind as to accompany me, you may take your tea out in the fresh air.”

With a facile gesture, she grasped his proffered hand for support. With her other she plucked her violin case out of the carnage, still, by all appearances, oblivious to the macabre display. “That would be agreeable,” she conceded. Her hand in his, she departed the compartment and avoided without acknowledgment the otherwise obvious hurdle. From there they strolled down the hall, out the car, down three steps, and into a pleasant little pasture. The promised fresh air was still polluted with smog from the combustion of coal, but a cool breeze steadily pushed such southwest.

“I’ll be back with your tea, ma’am,” the porter excused himself then rushed off to check on Lisette’s caretaker, whom he assumed, but soon with certainty ascertained, died as a consequence of the train’s abrupt halt.

“His tanned flesh a fine canvas, painted sanguine, stretched upon frame of bones,” Lisette darkly whispered, her senses focused on a distant nowhere. Inevitably, she returned to the present and relaxed herself on the lawn. There, almost indifferently, she observed other passengers disembark and scurry to and fro, in particular a man, perhaps a priest, as he rushed toward the rear of the train where several derailed carriages disrupted the bucolic scenery. Nobody, as yet, seemed to have noticed the front of the train which, from her vantage, appeared—or rather failed to appear—unaccounted for.

The Darkness Encroaches

Lisette Köhler

Name

Lisette Köhler

Nom de Guerre

The Charnel-Souled Minstrel

Occupation

In her past life, she was the member of an influential family and first string concert violinist and operatic soloist in the Royal Philharmonic.

Physical Attributes

Formerly a woman of distinction and poise, recent years razed her sybarite veneer. The prime of female youth, her mid-thirties, she spent severed from society by brick walls and an iron door, her only light distorted by grating two meters up from a cold plank floor—just high enough that her fingers were warmed in the dawn star’s rays when she stretched up her arm, tipped her toes, and grasped the sill. During her self-inflicted confinement, her straight jet hair grew lustrous and long; her olive gaze dulled; her skin, juxtaposed by a steady increase of silver tattoos mostly covered by a rough-knit charcoal cowl, paled to a cadaverous white; and her boyish countenance sharpened to a melancholy, yet nevertheless rather plain, interpretation of female beauty.

Mental Attributes

Once pleasant, albeit serious and astute, her occult coquetry gradually burgeoned to a disruptive amour. Inevitably, it took its toll and maligned her personality until oft overlooked and modest flaws became intolerably poignant. Vexed by unseen and unheard scenes and sounds, she comported herself as an introvert, brooded, murmured, languished, and succumbed to nigh-constant urges to play with profligate abandon the most utterly lachrymose violin solos and raise her once-beatific voice in malevolent half-murmurs. Such a dramatic change in her manner unsettled her sophisticated peers and led to her societal exile.

History

Daughter of a wealthy and influential noble and elevated, by virtue of her talent in addition to the usual cronyism, to first chair concert violinist and operatic soloist in the Royal Philharmonic, she was liked and admired by her peers, partially on account her demure personality but mostly for not being so lovely as to incite jealousy, demonstrated as she waltzed through a seemingly-endless series of balls unable to secure a suitor. Then her great uncle passed away and bequeathed on her a personal effect—a violin. Its appearance frightened her at first; however, once she played it she knew her fate was inexorably bound to the device. Playing it became a preoccupation. She realized this, knew danger neared, but her capacity to care was whelmed by desire. Over time, she further observed that all who heard it bent to her whims. They felt what she wanted them to feel and applauded when she longed for adulation. This merely increased her urge to perform. Still, at first unbeknownst to her, it was not merely others who were transformed, but herself. Inspiration struck and she began to compose her own works, strange dirges that evoked mental vignettes of violence, despair, and heresy. She obsessed over those things, even crafted her own bow from a ceremonial tattoo needle illicitly obtained from a foreign peddler. She wove her hair into the bow string. She played, and played, and played, until, eventually, her music summoned them. Entities from beyond the veil. Almost overnight, she lost interest in friends, family, and her busy social life. She no longer performed in public, but instead played endlessly in her quarters. She began talking under her breath, her utterances as grim as they were gruesome. Eventually, her father could take no more of it and insisted she self-admit, for forced commitment might reflect poorly on the family, at an asylum where she might recover her senses.

Like most sociopaths, she learned to mask her deeply troubled mind, but in truth her condition worsened. The asylum staff became victims of her musical manipulations and after several years of confinement she convinced them to release her to a convalescent home in the countryside just outside of the small city of Temnorapool.

This story begins on a train ride thereto.

Abilities

Vitality ⁽⁷⁾ Born to health and privilege, she was as well fed as she was looked after; even in the asylum. Vigorous in her endeavors as an occult violinist, her inward focus distracts from the strenuousness of physical hardship and accommodates lengthily and monotonous engagements.

Strength ⁽³⁾ While neither weak nor sickly, she has not, throughout her life, been required to lift anything heavier than an occupied violin case, a fault evidenced by her below average strength and diminutive frame.

Finesse ⁽⁹⁾ Adroit and constantly in motion, her fingers and limbs are adept at the mastery of new patterns and tasks, her body lithe, movements supple, and reactions uncanny.

Perception ⁽³⁾ With her mind often turned inward or beyond and thoughts focused music, much of the physical world around her drifts by unnoticed.

Intelligence ⁽⁹⁾ Raised in privilege and educated as such, her mind, cultivated by expert tutors, is as sharp as her instrument and, when she does speak in anger, her tongue.

Wisdom ⁽³⁾ Perhaps hers is not so much a lack of wisdom as a surplus of apathy and a constant condition of distraction.

Faith ⁽⁷⁾ A witness to the beyond, her only lapses in faith coincide with doubts as to the soundness of her own mind.

Occult ⁽⁹⁾ Her entanglement with the Eidolic Violin has brought her down a path where the occult world is practically all she knows and what remains is the mastery of her musically-derived powers.

Equipment

Eidolic Violin ⁽⁵⁾ A masterwork instrument of unknown provenance beyond its passage as a family heirloom to her from her mad great uncle, the ‘Eideolic Violin’ is an instrument of disquieting beauty. Bone exterior with a scroll of shrunken skull, crimson soul, and silver hardware, he insisted in his fantastic diary it was the corrupt synthesis of a holy saint’s reliquary and an infamous demoniac’s sarcophagus. Aberrant equally is its bow and tebori instrument that marred her flesh with tattoos, a device as twined in purpose as in form—her own hair and an unnaturally elongated femur silver-inset with occult motifs. When played by a virtuoso, its baleful strains physically manifest as sanguine condensation along the bow and strings. Queerer still, its music has been observed to influence the whims and emotions of its listeners, warp desire, paralyze will, and even conjure a commune beyond the veil.

Passport ⁽⁰⁾ A pocket binder of her identification paperwork.

Purse ⁽⁰⁾ A small purse concealed in her robes with enough coin for a person of meager means to retire on comfortably. In the city, it would buy her family a night of dinner, entertainment, and revelry.

Cowl ⁽⁰⁾ A rough-knit woolen cowl, dark gray in color, with an oversized hood, sleeves, and robe that covers her from head to heel.

The Darkness Encroaches

Here is my character submission!

Lisette Köhler

Name

Lisette Köhler

Nom de Guerre

The Charnel-Souled Minstrel

Occupation

In her past life, she was the member of an influential family and first string concert violinist and operatic soloist in the Royal Philharmonic.

Physical Attributes

Formerly a woman of distinction and poise, recent years razed her sybarite veneer. The prime of female youth, her mid-thirties, she spent severed from society by brick walls and an iron door, her only light distorted by grating two meters up from a cold plank floor—just high enough that her fingers were warmed in the dawn star’s rays when she stretched up her arm, tipped her toes, and grasped the sill. During her self-inflicted confinement, her straight jet hair grew lustrous and long; her olive gaze dulled; her skin, juxtaposed by a steady increase of silver tattoos mostly covered by a rough-knit charcoal cowl, paled to a cadaverous white; and her boyish countenance sharpened to a melancholy, yet nevertheless rather plain, interpretation of female beauty.

Mental Attributes

Once pleasant, albeit serious and astute, her occult coquetry gradually burgeoned to a disruptive amour. Inevitably, it took its toll and maligned her personality until oft overlooked and modest flaws became intolerably poignant. Vexed by unseen and unheard scenes and sounds, she comported herself as an introvert, brooded, murmured, languished, and succumbed to nigh-constant urges to play with profligate abandon the most utterly lachrymose violin solos and raise her once-beatific voice in malevolent half-murmurs. Such a dramatic change in her manner unsettled her sophisticated peers and led to her societal exile.

History

Daughter of a wealthy and influential noble and elevated, by virtue of her talent in addition to the usual cronyism, to first chair concert violinist and operatic soloist in the Royal Philharmonic, she was liked and admired by her peers, partially on account her demure personality but mostly for not being so lovely as to incite jealousy, demonstrated as she waltzed through a seemingly-endless series of balls unable to secure a suitor. Then her great uncle passed away and bequeathed on her a personal effect—a violin. Its appearance frightened her at first; however, once she played it she knew her fate was inexorably bound to the device. Playing it became a preoccupation. She realized this, knew danger neared, but her capacity to care was whelmed by desire. Over time, she further observed that all who heard it bent to her whims. They felt what she wanted them to feel and applauded when she longed for adulation. This merely increased her urge to perform. Still, at first unbeknownst to her, it was not merely others who were transformed, but herself. Inspiration struck and she began to compose her own works, strange dirges that evoked mental vignettes of violence, despair, and heresy. She obsessed over those things, even crafted her own bow from a ceremonial tattoo needle illicitly obtained from a foreign peddler. She wove her hair into the bow string. She played, and played, and played, until, eventually, her music summoned them. Entities from beyond the veil. Almost overnight, she lost interest in friends, family, and her busy social life. She no longer performed in public, but instead played endlessly in her quarters. She began talking under her breath, her utterances as grim as they were gruesome. Eventually, her father could take no more of it and insisted she self-admit, for forced commitment might reflect poorly on the family, at an asylum where she might recover her senses.

Like most sociopaths, she learned to mask her deeply troubled mind, but in truth her condition worsened. The asylum staff became victims of her musical manipulations and after several years of confinement she convinced them to release her to a convalescent home in the countryside just outside of the small city of Temnorapool.

This story begins on a train ride thereto.

Abilities

Vitality ⁽⁷⁾ Born to health and privilege, she was as well fed as she was looked after; even in the asylum. Vigorous in her endeavors as an occult violinist, her inward focus distracts from the strenuousness of physical hardship and accommodates lengthily and monotonous engagements.

Strength ⁽³⁾ While neither weak nor sickly, she has not, throughout her life, been required to lift anything heavier than an occupied violin case, a fault evidenced by her below average strength and diminutive frame.

Finesse ⁽⁹⁾ Adroit and constantly in motion, her fingers and limbs are adept at the mastery of new patterns and tasks, her body lithe, movements supple, and reactions uncanny.

Perception ⁽³⁾ With her mind often turned inward or beyond and thoughts focused music, much of the physical world around her drifts by unnoticed.

Intelligence ⁽⁹⁾ Raised in privilege and educated as such, her mind, cultivated by expert tutors, is as sharp as her instrument and, when she does speak in anger, her tongue.

Wisdom ⁽³⁾ Perhaps hers is not so much a lack of wisdom as a surplus of apathy and a constant condition of distraction.

Faith ⁽⁷⁾ A witness to the beyond, her only lapses in faith coincide with doubts as to the soundness of her own mind.

Occult ⁽⁹⁾ Her entanglement with the Eidolic Violin has brought her down a path where the occult world is practically all she knows and what remains is the mastery of her musically-derived powers.

Equipment

Eidolic Violin ⁽⁵⁾ A masterwork instrument of unknown provenance beyond its passage as a family heirloom to her from her mad great uncle, the ‘Eideolic Violin’ is an instrument of disquieting beauty. Bone exterior with a scroll of shrunken skull, crimson soul, and silver hardware, he insisted in his fantastic diary it was the corrupt synthesis of a holy saint’s reliquary and an infamous demoniac’s sarcophagus. Aberrant equally is its bow and tebori instrument that marred her flesh with tattoos, a device as twined in purpose as in form—her own hair and an unnaturally elongated femur silver-inset with occult motifs. When played by a virtuoso, its baleful strains physically manifest as sanguine condensation along the bow and strings. Queerer still, its music has been observed to influence the whims and emotions of its listeners, warp desire, paralyze will, and even conjure a commune beyond the veil.

Passport ⁽⁰⁾ A pocket binder of her identification paperwork.

Purse ⁽⁰⁾ A small purse concealed in her robes with enough coin for a person of meager means to retire on comfortably. In the city, it would buy her family a night of dinner, entertainment, and revelry.

Cowl ⁽⁰⁾ A rough-knit woolen cowl, dark gray in color, with an oversized hood, sleeves, and robe that covers her from head to heel.

Glasslands: A Griot's Tale (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

• Ndakala Blahyi - a Cape Town Aldi HR manager who uses his side job as an eco-tourism guide as a cover for spying for The Abditory. He is of pygmy descent, very short, very bald.
• Lydia Benson - American heiress billionaire who sends money to children in Phalaborwa.
• Dussan - Arcelisk resident of Mount Diaba, of Nubian descent, a mutant with extremely long limbs and super strength. Can easily lift a jeep.
• Digbo - a young man of South African descent who works as an Aldi employee in Cape Town.
• Makemba - an empathic mind reader who lives in Marange.

Glasslands: A Griot's Tale (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

And now for busy-body Circ, too!

Glasslands: A Griot's Tale (Earth-F67X Chronicle)

“I’ve heard rumors of places beyond the safety zone—unlikely settlements in the sea of glass, villages in the jungle canopy beyond reach of mutant beasts, even a city within a mountain, but always of thought such things as fairy tales, so this,” Ndakala extended his arm to embrace the unbelievable subterranean crystal cityscape, if such was an apt description of the perfect congruence of nature and commerce. “—this must be a fevered dream. I will wake to find I fell from my jeep after a nasty bump. There is no secret so well kept as Marange for there not to be whispers of it elsewhere.”

“I assure you, Marange is no fantasy,” Makemba insisted, “neither are rumors of such places as you’ve described quite as bountiful as you suggest.”

“I hear many things in my work, much of it embellished,” Ndakala consented.

“What work is that?”

“Westerners call it eco-tourism. I help people like Miss Benson go to where they want to go. Places Xanathan prevents ordinary people from going, poor places, sites in the militarized zone. I meet many strange folk with stranger stories along the way. It is good money. Before we were taken here, I was on my way with this lady”—he gestured to Lydia Benson who, for the moment, sipped docilely from a stone carafe filled with tea—“to Phalaborwa so she could meet the children her philanthropy has benefited. Now I hear Phalaborwa is engulfed in flames. A sad story, very sad, but one of the many I have seen on my journey.”

Lydia opined solemnly from her tea, “Such pointless tragedy, these tribal conflicts!”

They both ignored Lydia’s uninformed commentary. Instead, Makemba, who noted how transparently Ndakala performed for his client, narrowed her eyes and countered, “Not everything you say is true. I can tell by just looking at you, here and alive, that you are an honest man in principle, if not in fact, but also of humble means. Whatever money you make is not equal to the risk. You provide ‘tourist services’”—at this she held up her hand in quotes to emphasize her sarcasm—“as a front for other reasons.”

Lydia was obviously offended at the insinuation.

Ndakala shrugged dismissively.

“How is it you know of Mount Diaba?” Makemba demanded, clasped her hands tightly around one of Ndakala’s wrists, which lay on the table before her, and peered intently into his eyes.

. . .

Nine months prior. An eco-tourist wanted an extended leisure stay on the Etosha Pan. The Abditory wanted rumors of a settlement near the Ogooue River investigated. They said it was along the way. It was almost a week further north by jeep, assuming all went well. The cover was adequate, but the journey went far beyond his comfort zone. Still, his contacts were insistent. If he could get them in touch with a safe haven deep in the quarantine zone, they would have a mechanism to provide aid to much of Africa.

It was night, at least twenty hours since he last rested, and his fuel reserves were nearly halved. When they reached that point, he would be forced to turn back. The rough terrain alternated between dense jungle and marsh as the dirt road skirted the rim of the Nkomi lagoon. Once again, it all began to blur. It was the third time he stopped himself from passing out. Unable to safely continue, he pulled over. In the distance, to the north, he thought he saw a large dark silhouette; the shape of a mountain where no mountain ought to be. It was a vague thought as he drifted off, too exhausted to ruminate over the perils that milled around him in the nearby overgrowth.

With a jolt, he awoke. Still belted into the driver seat of his jeep, he and it bounced along a declination that appeared to be a former rail transport shaft. It reached the end, a pair of large blast doors, and the jeep dropped a good five feet. It sounded awful as the vehicle’s groan reverberated in the tunnel. Then a long-armed sinuous shadow gripped at a slid between the blast doors and pried them open enough to drag the jeep through. Inside was what appeared to be a bazaar, where people, many disfigured, engaged in some transactional exchange or another.

<< What did you find today, Dussan? >> chimed in an electronic voice from a speaker.

An unnaturally long-limbed and powerful nubian stepped into Ndakala’s field of view, looked into a security camera, and said, “Jeep with tiny dead man.”

<< He looks alive to me, Dussan. Bring him to the elders so we can find out who he is. >>

Dussan grunted, picked up the jeep, then—

<< No, Dussan. Leave the jeep there. We just need the man inside of it for now. >>

Ndakala hastily unbuckled himself before being torn from his vehicle. Carried along like a terrified sack of grain, and too afraid of speak lest he startle his captor, he was eventually taken down a hall and into a chamber where an assortment of individuals hastily assembled. Placed down, his legs trembled to where he could barely stand, but he managed.

Then, it seemed all at once, everyone, himself included, asked, “What’s this?”

<< A stranger was snooping around outside the Arcelisk. Dussan was on patrol, found him snoozing in his jeep, and brought him in. >>

“Arcelisk? What’s that?” Ndakala blurted out.

<< A self-contained sustainable society enclosed a single structure with limited exposure to or interaction with the outside world. >>

A woman with a forceful voice wearing robes that matched her red and orange silk turban stood at the head of the table and said, “Enough. The Council is in session. Sit down and answer our questions calmly and concisely. First, what is your name?”

“Ndakala Blayhi,” he sputtered.

“Very well, Ndakala. Who sent you?”

“A humanitarian aid organization that opposes the quarantine of the African continent and—,” he started, but was interrupted:

“I asked, ‘who sent you here?’ not, ‘what do they do?’”

“My contact? I don’t know. The organization reaches out in different ways to avoid being compromised to Xanathan and Earth Federation authorities. It is run by a bunch of rich business owners with more money than sense, useful in getting food and medicine to places like—” he was about to say ‘like this,’ thought better of it, and finished weakly—“to places that need help.”

After a protracted and wearisome interrogation, they unearthed all they desired of him and his motives. Meanwhile, he learned a little about his whereabouts. This was Mount Diaba, once a mountainous landfill erected from the discarded refuse of nearby coastal cities, abandoned, repurposed as a nuclear test site, crystallized in a series of internal nuclear explosions triggered by seismic activity, and finally an underground city. The place, once under martial law, was led by those ascertained by an artificial intelligence to be the best and most popular amongst the city’s inhabitants. A meritocracy of sorts. Proud of their mode of government, they explained it willingly, perhaps in the hope the experiment would blossom elsewhere.

Unexplained were key facts, such as the lack of radiation that would ordinarily still be present in lethal quantities, how the mutants all got here, and how the inside of the mountain was hallowed out. These were questions he asked, but not questions they answered.

Eventually, he inferred Mount Diaba was the settlement to which he was sent by the organization. He also found they did not desire assistance and instead opted to minimize their exposure to the outside world. They kept the transponder—not that they ever activated it—and other supplies, but left him his jeep and enough fuel to make it back to the nearest town. Left him unconscious in the same place they found him in order to conceal the entrance of their city. He was alone, as they felt it wouldn’t be safe to send him away with the ‘volatile ones,’ which was evidently a euphemism for mutants whose awakened powers were too dangerous for a close society.

A month after his departure, he returned to Etosha Pan and an infuriated client.

. . .

Ndakala recoiled from Makemba’s grasp as once scalded by hot water, but held her gaze. He felt violated, and his expression said as much, although he wasn’t certain what just transpired. He kept silent and waited for an explanation.

“I am an empath. If I touch another person while a memory is triggered, I will experience it with them.”

“Then now you must know we are not foes,” he said, his tone angry, but measured.

“Yes.”

“Then out of respect for me and my client ...” his words trailed off, his mind unable to articulate further what he wanted to say, but his meaning was clear as the waters fresh from an underground spring.

Mind, Magic, and Monstrosity

@Circ

Thank you for your interest, but this is an experimental RP to let some close friends of mine 'get their feet' wet, as it were, with RPing, so I am trying to maintain as sterile an environment as possible without the inclusion of outside factors. I will consider allowing others to join when they have become more comfortable with RPing.

@Stern Algorithm

My bad, I thought the join status was apply, not full. Must've been looking at the site cross-eyed. :)