Topic: Crucible of the Prodigal Daughter

Order of the Deacon

Date: 2008-12-30 16:22 EST
They were a scruffy looking lot. Looking more of the sort to be found hanging down by some dive on the docks, the trio stood on a corner of a deserted street. A bottle of cheap wine passed between them. Their laughter and easy manner didn't jibe with the sharp glances they sent up and down the street. One of them, taller and thinner then his bulky mates, pulled a cigarette from behind a pointed ear as he spotted a lone figure coming down the street. He tipped his head towards the cloaked figure coming their way as he struck a match and lit the smoke.

Tobacco smoke joined the rise of steam from their breaths as the trio watched the woman coming their way. One of the others grinned and let out a wolf whistle as three sets of eyes turned to the woman. He murmured something to his mates and the three of them started to laugh. Clearly it must have been some lewd comment judging by the hungry looks cast towards her.

She glanced up from her thoughts, far away on other matters, and found herself coming to a halt. Three men stood silhouetted in the hanging lanterns sick yellow glow, thick steam rising around them. Piper was pretty sure it was no one she knew, certainly not anyone she recognized. However, they did radiate a palpable sense of purpose. Of danger, even. Somewhere in the distance a snow owl hooted, the sound inexpressibly lonely.

Normally, the sight of three men smoking on a street corner wouldn't set off inner alarms. But these were not normal times, and the trio looked anything but docile . In the dying light of the day, she took a hesitant step backward and looked back the way she had come, half fooling herself into believing that Rhydin had returned to a slightly paranoid version of normal, except in Rhydin, slightly paranoid was normal. Without giving it more thought, she changed direction, into an alley.

The cigarette smoker nodded to his mates as the woman turned into the alley. The bottle passed between them again before he turned and strode off around the corner. The pair exchanged mad grins with each other as they moved down the street towards the opening of the alley.

Turning quickly into yet another gloomy passage, she heard heavily-soled boots scratch with a lazy gait against the cobbles just before she got the distinctive feeling of another presence, of another person in the vicinity watching, only to whirl about and find no one there. Alarmed, she started back the way she had come from, but the two hooligans were suddenly there blocking her retreat before she'd seen more than a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Quickly studying her surroundings, it didn't take a genius to figure out she'd run out of luck and straight into trouble. Soot and grime covered walls loomed over head at least three stories high. Gloomy alcoves with crumbling steps lead up to firmly barred doors. From overhead, a torn and tattered curtain stained with black splotches flapped in the cold night air from a drearily lit window.

The pair was quiet as they turned into the alley. One passed the bottle of wine to the other and cast a glance over his shoulder. The other took a swig as they stalked along. Seeing a nod after the other one's glance back, he dragged the bottom of the bottle along the brick of a wall at his side. The hollow sound of glass skittering over the bricks announced their presence like nails on a chalkboard.

With a swallowed oath of panic for her stupidity and no small amount of swelling dread, she turned back to face the man with the bottle and his partner even as she was reaching beneath her cloak. She tilted her head back, dark eyes shining in the pitiful light. "You should go before the watch comes around?"

As her treacherous fingers groped inadequately to find purchase around the cold handle of the heretic's fork secured at the small of her back, it was at that very moment that Piper's vision changed, a hole ripped into the fabric of her reality: it was as if a filter was ripped violently away from her eyes, and what she saw now was not what she had been seeing only an instant before. The things moving toward her were very clearly not men at all, but a terrible caricature of men, an evil parody of humanity. There was an aura of darkness surrounding them, a shadowy glow that seemed to blur the very outlines of their forms.

Her eyes darted back and forth between the two, woeful to let either out of her sight. She turned her head for only an instant as she pushed back against the wall. As she feared, the third had come up behind her, only a few feet away, glaring contemptuously down at her. The eyes that met her were cruel, pitiless black orbs that did not betray the slightest semblance of anything human behind them. Somewhere the owl hooted again.

Piper staggered sideways, her laudable intentions completely forgotten, replaced by a burning desire to be as far away from this place as possible. She could not remove her eyes from the looming man though, and so she saw how inhumanly fast he moved toward her suddenly. Putting everything behind it, she gripped both hands around the heretic's fork and swung with her whole body as she let out a piercing scream for help.