A Prosaic Tale [Solo] [Searing 122]

[Imogen]

Searing 62, 122

Imogen wasn’t a particularly boastful woman, but she was proud enough to hide her exhaustion until the Every Waking Moment had disappeared from sight.

This was a pretty stupid idea, in truth- Anton would undoubtedly have let her ride out of the city limits, where she could have rested her aching limbs and let her store of aether replenish. It wasn’t as though she had anything to be ashamed about. A Sunsinger could go their entire career without ever managing a Pact manifestation of that magnitude. Indeed, it would be one more thing Imogen felt obliged not to bring up to her superiors, lest they finally force her to take a higher rank.

But there was a sentimentality in the Ork which, if pressed, she would surely have denied- a feeling of quiet mourning for the city which had spurned her, and her family, and her race, and her friends, but which she had dedicated herself to protecting all the same. It did not feel right to come back to the High City for only a few hours, so she resolved to find some safe place to spend the night.

A few options presented themselves:

She could go back to the boarding-house where she had rented a bed for so many years. This struck her as profoundly unwise. Though she would very much like to know if old Mrs. Leonie had escaped Zaichaer safely, there was nothing back in her old rented room which she particularly cherished. Perhaps she would ask about, if she ran into any groups of survivors; but given Mrs. Leonie’s unblemished disdain for the “pidgies” of Kalzasi, she doubted very much the woman would have fled north.

”Alas,” she observed to the empty theater, ”Life is a series of meetings and partings. Fare well, Mrs. Leonie, and may we meet in a better land.”

[Imogen]

Alright, that was out of the question, then. She supposed she could return to Carina’s apartment, which was intact and had apparently remained locked through the worst of the mists. It was a bit small for her, but that was no real issue with her new powers of Animus. And anyway, she’d always wanted to spend a night in Carina’s b-

”Absolutely not!” Imogen admonished herself quietly. She wasn’t going to let herself get weird about all this. Yes, she’d just come back from a foreign land where people slept in big sweaty piles all the time, and yes it was stressful that Zaichaer was in ruins and on fire and everyone she loved was missing but none of that was any reason to make the situation weird.

So then, no apartment either. The Theater was, in theory, clear of monsters now but after the sickening encounter with the Theatergoers (the black oozing ichor of which she fancied still burned in her nostrils), she had very little desire to sleep there. Likewise to her old haunts, like the shops, the western park, or even the bar; all of them, aside from being abandoned, were, like as not, overrun with horrors.

That brought her ‘round to the place she might actually have slept the most during her life in Zaichaer- a safe house. In fact, and it almost embarrassed her that she’d thought of this after thinking to check all of Carina’s lodgings, she really ought to be looking for evidence of her own family’s escape.

Well, that settled it, then. The safe house kept by her mother (and usually her father as well) had been stationed without the walls of Zaichaer, and southerly; they would have left already, and she’d be wasting precious time going all the way there. The safe house her uncle had guarded, however, was only a few minutes from the Pfenning itself, and included a securable underground bunker. Maybe there was even something edible there, though she didn’t hold out too much hope.

~~~

The path from the Pfenning to Uncle Lewis’ old safehouse would only have taken her fifteen minutes to tread in the old days; now, however, she eschewed travel through the open streets. Alleyways struck her as no better. The sky was a relatively direct approach, but she needed to avoid tossing the packages she’d retrieved from the Theater storehouse for the night. By morning, she’d be able to leave them behind, but for now…

So Imogen took the form of the lemur, but infused it with enough strength to carry a bag the size of itself. She scampered up walls and across the rooftops, where there were still relatively few mutants and wastrels- a result of the ever-looming threat of the Mists descending from on high. This threat she largely disregarded. Instead of avoiding the clouds, Imogen evoked cat-claws from the lemur’s fingers, and imbued those with the spellbreaker, literally tearing apart wisps of chaos magic as they encroached.

By this method, the Sunsinger made her way swiftly through the southern streets, eventually arriving at the Safe House, a small apartment complex appended to the back of “Der Süßigkeitenhersteller”, a small candy shop focused on making traditional Kathalan treats. It would have been nice to say that Imogen had fond memories of the shop, but it was built some time after her childhood and she would never have entered the front door- the presence of many Orkhan regularly coming and going could only have aroused official suspicion.

She wasn’t tempted to go in now, either. If they had left any candy behind and it wasn’t yet eaten, it was because it was inedible, or tainted. Better just to avoid the chaos chocolatier, as it were, and proceed around the back.

The back door was not exactly open or closed- rather, it had been splintered at some point, an observation which encouraged Imogen to proceed but warily. With some trepidation, she maneuvered around shattered furniture within the small apartment, moving towards the little kitchen room and the hidden cellar door.

That she found closed, so she encouraged it to open with a bit of prying from her magic spear. Levering it open via telekinesis, the Ork found the rooms below to be cool and dry. Good: that meant that nothing had broken through from below.

There were no bodies either in the facade above or the rooms below, but it seemed the escaping inhabitants had taken most of the supplies with them. The pantry closet with mostly empty, with broken glass, but she found a few jars of jam preserves which seemed fresh and sealed, and decided to eat those while she could.

Imogen took her time exploring the abandoned safehouse after sealing up the cellar door above, poking into every shadow with her blazing sword to ensure that nothing was lurking about, ready to attack when she slept. The rooms were in reasonable shape, though each bore the signs of quick packing by individuals who did not plan to return. That was a relief, anyway. If Uncle Lewis had survived long enough to lead his people out of this safe house, she seriously doubted that anything that spawned from the mists would suffice to kill him. She made a note to herself to head south and try to find him and the other Wards once she’d tracked down Carina.

A Sunsinger safe house could look like many things- they were, on the whole, small, concealable, and built in ways which wouldn’t leave records or questioning masons. This bunker, as Imogen had heard it, had been a small forgery operation seventy years ago, and when the rooms atop it were rebuilt, the Sunsingers simply arranged to have it marked in the records as filled in and collapsed to avoid issues with weight distribution. It featured three small bedrooms, each capable of sleeping four men on cots, the closet and hidden pantry, a larger common-room area, and an office.

Imogen broke into the office easily. This little room was simple, but important- it contained the writing desk, the small Scrivening which was meant to detect violations of the outer wards, a small cabinet for temporary storage of documents, and a lockbox for valuables. Any permanent records had to be sent off once a month to the Sanctuary of the Dawn, for safety’s sake.

Though she’d expected Lewis’ quick exit might have left some papers, she was disappointed. The writing desk was singed, and the cabinet broken; it took Imogen but a moment to work out that Lewis must have destroyed the documents before evacuating. Probably a smart move, but her uncle had always had a cool head under pressure.

One scrap remained on the desk, hurriedly torn off a larger letter- a single line of text. “Harry’s Quay.”

The Ork girl smiled, revealing sharp teeth. That wasn’t the official name of any place, but what the Wards called the farm far to the south, where the Sunsingers kept a large safe house for initiation purposes. Imogen could remember traveling there herself, to be denied admission by Master Gerhard…

She pushed that thought from her mind. She’d find him too, probably.

Fine. It was a comfort to know, at the least, that her uncle had intended to leave the surrounding area rather than staying to fight. Trying to hold the line against the Mist-twisted and getting his liver torn out was exactly the sort of thing he might have been expected to do.

With all of that done, Imogen was now alone in the safe house, and there were blankets enough for a comfortable rest. She was still nude, having abandoned her stolen clothes at the Pfenning, but she had the dragonshards, and time enough to embed them the next morning. Without further ado, she went to sleep.

~~~

Bzzzzz

Without further ad-

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO SHE-

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Imogen’s eyes snapped open in the cot as she felt the tiny wing-beats of the fly as it passed over her face. The little insect undoubtedly smelled the jam on her breath, and she slapped at it as it tried to land near her mouth. The tiny beast easily evaded her swing, buzzing serenely off to the corner of the room.

She tried turning over again, but found the noise from the fly’s wingbeats growing closer. Doubtless it had found little to eat since it had been sealed up in these dark chambers, and it wasn’t going to let her go that easily.

Imogen swatted at it again, and again, but as minutes crept towards an hour, the worry and stress of her entire situation overwhelmed her better judgment. She sat up in bed, face a mask of absolute serenity, and summoned her zweihander. The silver light of the nova-fire illuminated the entire room, casting the piled cots and discarded clothes and the little buzzing fly into stark relief.

Bzzzzzzz

”Eat sh-” No, wait, that’s what flies did like to eat. ”Go to hell you… little… buzzing fuck.”

They weren’t much, as words of condemnation went, but Imogen attacked anyway.

~~~

The next day, Imogen emerged from the safehouse, which was in much worse shape than she’d found it. Somehow, the remaining furniture and walls had been exposed to tremendous force, and were covered with burn marks besides.

But she’d gotten that goddamn fly, and in more ways than one.

…

Satisfied with this conclusion, Imogen turned into a bird and flew away.

[Imogen]

Review

Imogen*

Lore: 6 incredible lores

Points: 8, may not be used for magic

Injuries/Ailments: Bad night's sleep ):

Loot: Dead fly

Notes: Sometimes you just come back to your hometown and it's been destroyed so you go to hang with your cool uncle but he's fled the country so you try to go to sleep in his guest room but there's an annoying bug. Those are the moments which change the world.



*That's me!