A Light in the Darkness

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IamLEAM1983
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A Light in the Darkness

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Dalarath's plankton beds were white, the sunken city's bioluminescent fungi and algae glowing sullenly as silent stretched across the cavern. At deeper fathoms than Man still has to dive, night was unfolding. Most were asleep, joined in the myriad walls and corridors of the Darkhallow while their bodies recuperated. Some were up, however, and perpetuated the city's blood-soaked traditions. In Dalarath, families being undone in sudden and brutal murder was commonplace. Ordinary, even. Someone had a slave you wanted, someone else had assembled a bauble that interested you and more likely, someone had a position that placed them just half a step closer to social advancement? You conspired to kill them or to betray their trust. These were people who could sleep soundly over blood-curdling and mind-rending screams of sudden anguish that pierced the moist streets, and who considered feverish omens of the world's undoing with the furrowed brows of the righteous and the smiles of comforted children.

The Augur, however, was not sleeping. He hadn't slept in the last four days, and his new healer had only been by his side for two months. She was working hard to keep him alive and to force him back on the mend, and his trajectory tended to leap and bound between impressive recoveries and sudden relapses. Both of them suspected that someone was forcing the cooks to poison his food and drink, to delay or even reverse his being cured.

In normal circumstances, the Augur had nothing to fear. As fat as he was, his mind could still annihilate all those who had the folly of attacking him from the front. In true Void Weaver fashion, however, his assailant did not show his face and preferred duplicitous and dishonest means. With no easy targets, the now largely useless concubines he still lodged and the small cadre of personal Arbiters were his eyes and ears, ready and willing to step forward at the first sign of any tangible threat. Of course, tradition demanded that the Chamberlain be implicated, but the Augur also knew that striking pre-emptively would be perceived as cowardice by his people. His faithful wanted to see an act of hubris punished in the open, and he couldn't give them that by ridding himself of an obviously conniving snake.

He had everything a man from the surface or the Depths could have ever wished for. Luxurious pillows, the finest of fabrics as designed by atoms and molecules freed of their Earthly constraints, precious metals in generous quantities, and every delicacy the ocean could possibly bring him. Some brine pools even allowed him to taste meals and meats from inland and from all across the world. He'd eaten camel the day before, and that rich meat still wasn't agreeing with him. He had women, too. Dozens of shapes and shades and dispositions and tastes for him to sample, which he did with the gentle touch of a connoisseur.

What had begun as an exercise in hedonism had gradually changed into honest care, both of a material and emotional nature. Pleasure was what he sought, and the insanity he preferred was deep and warm and comfortable, as opposed to what he knew his faithful would demand, day in and day out. As mad as all his women were, none of them were as mad as his own people. They wore fine clothes of their own, slept on mentally constructed mattresses of the softest materials the physical poetry of his mind could conjure, and ate from his own larder. He drove insane not with harm or desecration of the flesh, but with unrelenting carnal pleasure.

What the Augur didn't have, however, was health. The Others were sustaining his self-destructive habits and physique, supplying his organs with defiant life where many others would have begun to show signs of failure. They didn't seem intent on rewarding his inability to stop the Chamberlain's first dagger, however. With a badly healed and previously punctured lung, he spent his nights coughing up fluid or catching himself expressing thoughts only she could possibly approve of.

Thoughts of release, most often. Of dissipating fever spells and restored vigor. Of normalcy, quite simply. If he'd been true to the Black Books, he should have been wallowing in his own diseased flesh, praying for the Dwellers in the Void to elevate his weakened state to the status of an anointment of some sort. Renewed potency, perhaps, or the ability to spread his own affliction with a touch.

He - just couldn't, however. He tried, but he was always too tired to sustain the kind of hatred this would have needed, too busy shivering and calling for fresh bed sheets to not admit that he wanted it to stop.

In a very human sense, he desired release. At the very least, he'd persuaded her to use a few herbs of hers to give the old stab wound the appearance of having festered, of having been blessed by Their blackest of consecrations. Privately, however?

He wanted to be on the mend and could not speak of it to anyone. Anyone but her - for whom his feelings were growing increasingly complex.

Dangerous times, indeed.

Turning his head, the squid allowed himself a few moments to cough into one of his pillows. Coming out of it with a swimming head and blurred vision, he gasped for air.

"Healer!" he called out. "Healer, come to me!"

Another coughing fit.

"Please, Meris!"
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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The Augur would hear the sound of hurried footsteps coming toward his room. "Comin', Augur!" the feminine voice answered.

Meris suddenly appeared in the doorway to his quarters and ventured over to his bed. The selkie healer's pale skin was made even more apparent by her dark clothing. A sheer veil covered most of her face and kept her hair back, only allowing her eyes to be seen. A black open robe fluttered around her as she came to check on him, leaving most of her torso bare. A bandeau-like top covered her breasts, but was twisted around to push her breasts up to maximum cleavage. A long skirt hung low on her hips with a slit going up both sides that showed off her lithe legs.

Keeping her eyes toward the ground, she neared his bed. "What is ailin' ye, my lord?" she asked with a surprising amount of care in her tone.
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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"My lungs," wheezed the Squid, even as he tried to sit up to maybe grant her easier access to his chest. Being already propped up on a small horde of pillows, he didn't have that far to go. "Here I was, yesterday," he said, regret audible in his rendition of the selkie tongue, "walking about the pavilion and regaling myself with your stories... The fever had fallen, but now I feel weak all over again!"

On his end, he carried a surprising amount of frustration for a Void Weaver. "Oh, how I wish I could finally confront this damnable fool!"

A pudgy and pale hand, covered in the fine webwork of surface veins, reached out and gently grasped one of hers. "Please," he asked her, "you've been with us for months, now. I've never raised a hand against you, and nor do I plan to. Please offer me the honour of looking at me directly."

He wasn't pretty, that was obvious, but there was something to his face - something that went beyond Amaxi's influence. The little dimples on the corners of his mouth which his tentacles hid had nothing to do with the Many-Armed's influence, nor did his surprisingly big eyes. Normally, Void Weavers had eyes to show that appeared nearly blind to outsiders, a fitting result of their subterranean existence. They could see quite well, but a rheumy filter was customary, a kind of white sheen that dulled the actual colour and shape of their eyes. His were unusually clear, if as dark as could be expected. He had round pupils, too - a rare native trait in his species.

"I owe you my life," he said. "The least I can do is-"

He stopped, briefly taken by more coughs.

"The least I can do is to consider you worthy of my presence - which you've proven to be several times over."
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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Her eyes timidly turned up to look at his. They were big, as befitted a phocine theriomorph. The round, black pupils melted into the liquid, light brown irises, lined by dark lashes.

A slender, warm hand touched the bare skin of his chest, feeling for the affliction. A soft humming began in her throat and shifted into a lyrical melody sung by a silvery voice. The ruler would feel the via ripple through his chest as her spell began to take effect, banishing pain and infection.
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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For the longest time, he didn't say or do much. His features slackened, his breathing steadied, and an uncharitable or cynical sort would believe he'd fallen asleep, as good as she was. He reopened his eyes once her song drifted away - and something new was in them. He looked pained again, but not in any sort of physical sense. Still, he made a valiant effort and swallowed it away for the time being, allowing himself one comfortably deep and interrupted inhalation.

"Thank you," he said, the words trailing into a long sigh of pure relief. "If only it were possible for me to..."

He closed his eyes again and briefly turned away, but he still did look back to her. "Six months of care, Meris. Is it too soon for me to assume that you believe me when I say I can afford to be different from my people? You have every reason to think I would lie to you, that I would hurt you - like all the others that came before. I'm well aware of that."
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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"I..." Meris started, her eyes uncertain, "dunno ken. How is that possible? Yer followers expect ye tae be th' exact opposite o' what my kin cherish. Treachery is like breathin' air tae ye..." she responded hesitantly.

The transparency of the veil's fabric still allowed him to see the outline of her hair, nose and lips. The delicate, chiffon-like substance quivered gently as she exhaled. Like all other slaves, she wore a collar. Hers was of the darkest leather, its exterior studded in small, but wickedly sharp spikes that glinted in the dim light of his bedroom, and covered the entire length of her throat.

"That is th' way o' th' Voidweavers. Trust is th' only t'ing that cinno' be created out o' not'ing in this world."
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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He nodded, his tentacles gently quivering for a second or two, producing lip-smacking sounds. "I understand," he noted. "The Black Books are open to many interpretations, and the masses desire the most common. I already stand on slippery territory, being a direct descendant from the previous Augur."

That made him scoff lightly. "I understand selkies and other surface-dwellers consider siring an heir to be a form of success. It also is down here - but the heir must be tested. I never was. I have some personal experience of how things are done beyond Dalarath - and your ways are anathema to us. You'd assume my surviving a murder attempt would suffice."

The Augur lightly winced. "I'd hoped that my devotion to Amaxi and Harrogath would provide respite from the violent hands that touched you - but I understand that trust is a hard-won thing."

He gave her an earnest look. "I won't pressure you to trust me, Meris. False hopes are not part of my tools, as I know how slaves can grow deluded into caring for their masters. I don't desire this kind of attachment."

Silence fell for a few moments, after which he looked back to her. "I would like to hear more than your people's legends, eventually. I could appease some of your fears by showing you how I can respect the selkies for what they are. In all honesty, my own people are afraid of the harder paths to enlightenment. Tearing you limb from limb would bring Dar-Larath some pity amusement, but it is my job to display logic where my kind refuse to.

We could learn from one another, Meris - if you'd let it happen."
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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Puzzled, Meris furrowed her brows and frowned. "What would I hae tae learn frae ye?" she asked. She didn't understand why there would be anything reciprocal between them. The roane figured she would be treated as a healer or possibly given some other duty that fit a slave. And the thought of giving him an heir was mind-boggling. He had a large harem to pick from; why would she be valued as a mother to the next Oracle or Augur? The very fact of what was effectively a man-child being raised to bring an end to what she knew terrified the bard.
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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The Squid laughed. It was a soft and secretive sound, destined only for her. "I said nothing about us coupling, Meris. To expect you to agree to help me father an heir would be presumptuous. I'm not blind, you've seen how we treat our sacrificial bodies. You know how demanding giving birth to one of my kind can be."

He lightly kneaded her hands' fingers between his own. "I only ever spoke of knowledge. I couldn't know what calibre of healer my scouts would return from the surface world, so I was forced to plan ahead. Like any sensibly paranoid ruler, I planned decades ahead."

A shrug was managed. "I had magi and sages abducted from all corners of the world, aware that my direct lineage was a target. I needed a means to defend myself, to defend the sacred holdings bestowed upon me by the Others. I've learned from them what I can, which is why Amaxi still sponsors me to this day. I'm no mage, but I've trained myself to be an adequate tutor. I could impart you with an academic perspective of what practitioners stronger than yourself have encountered. It would be up to you to train yourself, so that your powers eventually do match your knowledge."

He gave her another earnest look. "I haven't been looking for a mate, Meris, or another concubine. I'm also not looking for a simple healer, in truth."

Using the hand he held, he gently dragged her closer to his tentacles - not to kiss her, but to whisper in her ear.

"I want a diplomatic solution."
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Re: A Light in the Darkness

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Meris blinked at the squid upon hearing his suggestion and true motive. Tension left her body; her relief was apparent. "A diplomatic solution tae what?" she whispered back.
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