Long Game 74: You Want It Darker

[STINK he/him]

Like at this point in the game I know who I like and who I don't like

And who just says stuff but like isn't much actionable of which Matrim is one

People were throwing around pocketing and all that jazz earlier in the game and I'm still wondering why tbh but like

I just odn't get it

[Haelbarde he/him]

Just now, _Stick_ said:

well they're either 7 or 6 arent they 

I'd have guessed 5...

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

3 minutes ago, Ashbringer said:

Ay, now there’s a lot of people viewing the thread! Like Burnt and STINK!

Please vote Araris (or Devo). The less fringe votes the better.

 

I bet all the dead players are yelling at us

My TJ vote is kinda useless so Devotary I guess. Can't have ties messing things up. And 15 people viewing the thread is giving me a heart attack >>

[Stick. she/her]

Just now, Haelbarde said:

I'd have guessed 5...

That would be great, gives us a lot more times for sure. But this would also mean they've got thugs and lurchers aplenty i guess?

[Ashbringer he/him]

AG was six, and that had less people. Although Seeker might cut down the player numbers.

Guess Stink doesn’t like me...

Can we not be within one Soothe of a tie... Fifth...

[Haelbarde he/him]

Just now, _Stick_ said:

That would be great, gives us a lot more times for sure. But this would also mean they've got thugs and lurchers aplenty i guess?

I'd do 5 with no thug for their team personally. Particularly if they had a mistborn. Meta I thought was a √(player count) person which would be 5 also.

[STINK he/him]

Aight Ash

Fine you ain't my immediate problem but I kinda want an alternative and yes i may be spamming PMs no cares

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[Illwei]

Just now, Ashbringer said:

AG was six, and that had less people

AG had three Neutrals, why does everyone forget this?

[Burnt Spaghetti she/her]

Araris(5): TJ, Ash, Hael, illwei, dev
Devotary(4): Stick, Mail, Elandera, fifth
Stick(1): Araris

 

 

for the sake of taking further away from a tie araris

[Ashbringer he/him]

Quote

AG had three Neutrals, why does everyone forget this?

Because I had bigger problems -.-

Edited March 13, 2021 by Ashbringer

[Stick. she/her]

Just now, Haelbarde said:

I'd do 5 with no thug for their team personally. Particularly if they had a mistborn. Meta I thought was a √(player count) person which would be 5 also.

I dont think kas agrees with meta's distributions so hm idk

[Haelbarde he/him]

Just now, _Stick_ said:

I dont think kas agrees with meta's distributions so hm idk

It ain't Tyrian Falls without a Meta distribution.

[Burnt Spaghetti she/her]

thread really woke up for the end of cycle huh

[Ashbringer he/him]

Ahhhhh this is still too close

[Illwei]

1 minute ago, Ashbringer said:

Because I had bigger problems -.-

Lmao like what, being dead? :P.

Araris

Connie

[STINK he/him]

Condensation

Hi I have people responding to my PMs and some that don't

[Mailliw73 he/him]

Okay... Devotary. 

Condensation. Sorry, but I just don’t know that the mistborn really is village. 

[Araris Valerian he/him]

Stick. Connie.

[Devotary of Spontaneity]

Araris, Condensation

[Fifth Scholar he/him]

1 minute ago, Ashbringer said:

Can we not be within one Soothe of a tie... Fifth...

FINE

Devotary

Condensation

Can't let a claimed Elim Mistborn get away with survival  

1 minute ago, Haelbarde said:

I'd do 5 with no thug for their team personally. Particularly if they had a mistborn. Meta I thought was a √(player count) person which would be 5 also.

Meta was the 20% rule  

[Haelbarde he/him]

Just now, Burnt Spaghetti said:

thread really woke up for the end of cycle huh

Chances there's spiked among us?

Also, sorry Kas

[Stick. she/her]

Just now, Haelbarde said:

It ain't Tyrian Falls without a Meta distribution.

it's why it's Fallion's Tears  

------------------

Turn's over folks stay tuned for the Aftermath 

[Ashbringer he/him]

Well.

It’s been an honor.

[Kasimir he/him]

And the Day has ended.

But have you chosen wisely? 

[Kasimir he/him]

Night Five: Through Dark and Light

“Through dark and light I fight to be
So close
Shadows and lies mask you from me
So close
Bathe my skin, the darkness within
So close
The war of our lives no one can win,”

—’So Close’, Ólafur Arnalds

Sometimes, it’s easy to drown in your own darkness. 

Your own bitterness, your own cynicism. Sometimes I think this job kills us all, in the end. Some of us, it takes faster. Not everyone’s cut out for burning away their youth running down perps, and all the drek you see, it eats at you, deep down somewhere, if you’ve even a shred of decency. Or maybe I like to tell myself that because I think that’s how Wyl would’ve thought about these things. 

Watch burn out all the time.

You see that back in Tremredare. Sometimes, it’s a bad case or a bad series of cases that does it. Sometimes, it’s just the final straw, the final crack in the wall. Man stops showing up for work, or sometimes you head over to make a check on them, ‘cause the sergeant asks, and ‘cause Watch looks out for each other, and then, well. You’ve got to learn to file away the feelings, and I guess I was always better at that than most. Hard to run with a crew in Tremredare, if I hadn’t. Maybe that makes me a natural.

Or maybe I’m just enough of a bastard. Fine by me, really. World needs its bastards, too.

Guess what I’m saying is that I’m used to seeing the signs in others. But Wyl seemed fine, just figured he was working himself hard, but since when didn’t we?

I knew I was feeling tired. Worn down, I suppose. Like it was harder to care. I hadn’t felt that way in years, really. Since that Kendricks case in Tremredare. God, I hated the Kendricks case. We worked it for over a year, on and off in teams. How does a kid go missing for so long? Normally, kid who goes missing that long is dead. That’s the way of it.

But when we found her…

Like I said, even in the Red Knives, we had lines we wouldn’t cross. I think I spent the rest of the month in some kind of strange haze. Was like the mists had settled inside of me, and I wasn’t me. I was just doing everything the way I was supposed to but I wasn’t feeling anything. I think that was the moment I started to think of myself as Watch, not just Wyl’s charity case. Not that I was in there just because someone had to look out for Wyl, or because I felt like I had to repay him, somehow. He’d scoff at that, of course. But I felt I owed him anyway, for saving my life. 

Watch work was still work, and each case, each day, took me further away from the blood soaking into the walls and floors of our safehouse. From what had become of Waes. From what had become of her.

Sometimes, you don’t even realise you’re burning out, until you’re drowning beneath two hundred metric tonnes of apathy and seawater and you can’t breathe. The more I sat at the desk in our office and tried to put together the information we had from witnesses and the scene, the more I felt like it wasn’t doing much good. I kept thinking about what it had felt like to torch Erik’s fields. It had felt bad. I liked Erik. But it had felt good, too, moving in like a younger man, and burning it down the way I’d used to, back in the Knives.

And the part of me that maybe spent too long in the company of Wyl whispers, “And what happens to Erik then, Speirs? Think he’s got someone he needs to feed?” I told myself it didn’t matter; Erik was aging, childless. But Wyl’s voice was no less sharp. No less damning.

If there’s something worse than having gotten a conscience, it’s having that conscience speak to you in the voice of your business partner. Trust me on that.

I shoved aside the papers and told myself I was going to take a walk. And that’s how I found him, dumped on my doorstep like trash. I hurried Wyl in, and cut the ropes about his hands and yanked the burlap sack off his head. He was still groggy, so I sat him down on the hard chair, told him to focus on his breathing, and went about to get our medicine kit and put the kettle on for some tea.

I knew, of course, what was going on. It was a threat, both directed at Wyl, and me. I was a Red Knife. I knew that language. I spoke it too fluently, really. To Wyl, our killers were telling him that they could kill him, but had chosen not to. To me, they were saying they knew where I lived and worked. That they could get to me any time they liked.

I wasn’t that impressed, though. Still have some surprises left, and in a village like Fallion’s Tears, I’d be more astonished if someone didn’t know where we worked. 

Wyl had begun to stir by the time I returned with hot tea, and I shoved the mug into his hands. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t suffering from any life-threatening injury. He’d just been beaten up, and he was still pale and unsteady. Tea slopped a little over the edge of the mug, but we’d gotten worse things on the floor so many times I think even Arenta had given up on us.

“Look at what the dog dragged in,” I said, ironically. “Got to hand it to you, you still take a beating like a champ.”

“You know how it is,” Wyl said. “You learn the trick a couple of times dockside, you never lose the knack for it.” He winced as he touched the side of his head. “God, that’s too much light out there.”

I pulled the shutters closed, and all of a sudden, the office got just that much darker and gloomier. I unhooded the desk lamp, watched the wavering, flickering shadows we cast on the far wall.

He’d worked open the medicine kit and found one of El’s herbal powders and made a face. “I remember this. It tastes awful.”

“Toss it in your tea, then.”

“And waste good tea?” Wyl sighed.

“There’s more where that came from,” I pointed out. “And you don’t want to be fighting the mother of all headaches right around now.”

He sighed again, as though El’s blends had personally inconvenienced him, but dumped it all in his tea and drank without further complaint.

“So,” I said. “What happened?”

Wyl looked over at me. For no reason I could tell, there was this instant where his gaze became much more guarded. I didn’t remember him being that way, not since the Red Knives had been slaughtered. Maybe even before that. It was the sort of look you give to a suspect, or something you’re trying to wrangle more information out of, and I didn’t like that it’d been turned on me now.

“Was trying to talk to Philico,” he said, at last.

“Magician, right? The one who vanished?” There were all sorts of rumours going around the village: that Philico had disappeared, that he’d exploded into a bunch of insects and slalomed his way out of the village, that he’d been iced… I couldn’t for the life of me make sense of them, except that Philico was gone.

“Yeah,” Wyl said. “We talked. He was in the vicinity of the Crow the night it went up in flames, so I figured maybe he knew something. He tried to warn me but whoever it was, they got the drop on me.” He frowned and gestured. “Probably about yea high, and they were pretty trained. Classic academy nap tap.” He used the slang for the baton to the head trick they teach you for when you badly, badly need to subdue someone. “And quiet too. I didn’t realise they were there until it was too late.”

Well, drek. No wonder Wyl was staring at me like that.

“You know if it were me, I’d have just iced you,” I said, lightly.

“Sure,” said Wyl. He eyed his tea with the distaste you reserve for tavern duty and sewer duty, back in the Watch. Back in Tremredare.

“Why’d you think they left you alive?”

“Hmm?”

“Anyone who got the drop on you like this,” I clarified. “They could’ve iced you. Instead, they went for the non-lethal approach. Why?”

Wyl shrugged. “Hell if I know,” he said. “Guess I’m just that hard to kill.”

Which wasn’t much of an answer, but I figured it had to do with my thoughts on his being dumped on our doorstep being a threat directed at both of us. But why did you threaten people? You threatened them so they would do what you wanted. And you threatened them so—

“At least we can do a line-up,” Wyl said. “They definitely weren’t reaching up to hit me, and I didn’t get the sense they were looming over me either. So we have that to go on.” 

I supposed so, though it wasn’t much. It did rule out Erik and a couple others, but unfortunately for me, it left me very much in the picture, and that wasn’t good.

I don’t know how long we sat there, tense, staring at each other, as if hoping one of us would break down and talk about it. Or tell the truth, maybe. Sometimes, people get nervous. A lot of people aren’t comfortable with silence, and an investigator who says little and listens and glares can carefully work more out of people than they’d intended to say.

But we were both comfortable with silence, and so the silence stretched out, on and on, between the two of us. Damnit.

I remembered the Kendricks case again. I guess it was because we’d been sleep-deprived, and more or less at each others’ throats. I think the whole team was on edge, really. A combination of the pressure, the other cases we were tackling, and the fact that this one was connected to a series of other cases, all involving missing children.

I remember that night. Few weeks before we had our large break, the one that cracked the case wide open. Woman coming to us, telling us she’d heard what sounded like the cries of a child coming from a tool shed. God, if she hadn’t come forward, if she’d doubted, if she hadn’t been concerned…

But that night. The stars were out, and shining brightly. We were both knocking it off for the day, and trudging back to our homes. I don’t remember what we were talking about. Work stuff, maybe. Other stuff, possibly. Sometimes you just want to reach out in the dark and know that someone else is there. Someone who isn’t part of all the horrors that we can inflict on each other.

“Used to make all sorts of stories about those stars,” I said.

Wyl looked at me, eyebrow raised. “You all right there?”

“Back in the Red Knives. Or before, really. Sometimes I told stories to the street kids,” I said. “Usually about the stars, because they’re the first bloody thing you see when you look up, and everyone’s tired of hearing about the mistwraiths.”

“Stories, you say.”

“Yeah. Stories. Know what’s the most basic story of all?”

He canted his shoulders in a shrug and waited.

“Light against dark.”

Wyl looked at the shadows that surrounded us, at the darkness of the night, and maybe it was a gesture that was just as much about how damned tired we were, how damned done and heartsore we were about not being about to crack that Kendricks case, and the thousand and fifty other cases that had fallen on our desk, about how much the well of human sorrows and suffering never seemed to run dry, not in Tremredare, and he said, “Well. Guess the dark’s doing pretty well for itself, eh?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it is.”

 

Kast headed out.

He needed the walk, just to clear his head. He was running around in circles on the cases, and a staredown with Wyl wasn’t appealing. All of which pointed to the fact he needed a break. 

Wyl was laid up on the sofa, just trying to rest up. 

There was already an angry mob in the village square. Kast wondered how it had come to this, how anger, and excitement, and fear had so thoroughly poisoned Fallion’s Tears, over a matter of days. 

Did he get to judge? He was so thoroughly worn down, just trying to work out what had happened. If it were Tremredare, they’d have gone around and knocked on every door and asked for an interview. But here, despite Mayor Wilson’s backing, she hadn’t bothered to support them in eliciting information from all the villagers in Fallion’s Tears. And then they were at an impasse: only the Mayor had the authority, or at least the respect to demand cooperation. And not all the villagers were willing to be thoroughly interviewed about their whereabouts, though it would’ve helped immensely with constructing a timetable of who could’ve possibly iced Leas Fel, or Bart, or Sara, or attacked Wyl.

Kast frowned. Something about that still bothered him. But he knew better than to get wound up about it, so he filed the thought away and let it steep like tea.

No sense in bemoaning what they couldn't have, after all.

Erik was trying to separate a cluster of arguing villagers, and Kast stepped over to take a look. One of them, Derrick, was arguing that they were in trouble if they didn’t find the killers soon. The village acupuncturist, Illwei, had agreed with Derrick, urging the villagers of Fallion’s Tears to locate the killers among them.

Lord Ruler help them, Kast thought. He’d seen vigilante justice too many times, and he was of the opinion it was messy and often didn’t get the job done right.

He did his best to hide his distaste. As far as he could tell, Illwei’s clinic involved sticking needles into people and hoping for the best. Kast had always declined, despite Illwei’s insistence it might help his bad leg. Something about promoting circulation.

He didn’t trust needles anymore. Not since the slaughter of the Red Knives.

It always went back to your past, and the ghosts that haunted you, didn’t it?

Despite having been all but out for Marll’s blood a couple of days ago, most of the gathered villagers seemed to have accepted that the gambling cobbler was not going to be dead anytime soon. Personally, Kast had seen how Marll had fared in that brawl against Roko, and supposed it was impressive enough. 

Instead, a few of the villagers, including the reclusive painter Roseanna Ghetti, and the traveling author Hael had decided that Arenta was suspicious. Kast wasn’t sure about that; some of the anger and suspicion directed against Arenta seemed to be driven by grudges relating to the inflexibility with which she demanded tenants pay their rents, rather than anything she had actually done.

Arenta had been a fixture of the village, insisted Dayle Palladiel, who was sounding surprisingly lucid for once. Kast supposed the shock of the killings had gotten even Palladiel to arrive from her metallurgist’s workshop. They exchanged nods, acknowledging each other.

Another group, including Palladiel, cast suspicion on the alchemist Sonnah Cojic instead. They, too, had been a relative newcomer to the village, and Palladiel pointed out that with the smoke and explosions emerging from Cojic’s workshop at the outskirts of Fallion’s Tears, who was to say Cojic didn’t have the know-how to set the Crow ablaze?

“It’s simple arson,” Kast pointed out, exasperated, but no one seemed interested in listening to him. They’d made up their minds, and the mood in the village square seemed to grow only darker with each passing argument. A few times, Erik beseeched the villagers of Fallion’s Tears to keep their calm, but to no avail.

At Derrick’s urging, the villagers were pressing Erik to take either Arenta or Cojic into custody.

“I can’t just lock someone up because you don’t like them!” Erik exploded, unhappily.

“Might be for the best,” Kast said, quietly. “Look at the crowd now. They might be safer with the militia, and you really want another village square riot on your hands? Because that’s exactly how you get another riot. Crowd as agitated as this…”

Erik saw the sense in it, and he was preparing to take both Cojic and Arenta into custody, when everything went to hell in a handbasket.

Smoothly, as if they had planned it, and surely they must have planned it, because nothing fecking made sense anymore, some of the villagers turned on the others. 

Arenta pulled out a rolling pin out of what Kast swore was bloody nowhere at all and bashed Erik with it, forcing him to stagger. In that same moment, Smirkai and Marll drew knives and advanced. Kast didn’t even want to know what Illwei had in mind with her needles.

Iste Confessor had a dueling cane in hand and was advancing on the newcomer, Connie. 

A shower of coins sprayed out in a broad arc. 

Connie was the other Coinshot.

Kast swore to himself and did something he had not properly done in a very long time. He burned Steel and pushed back.

Deflecting the coins was harder than he’d expected. Firing with the villagers gathered was reckless, and it was all Kast could to push the coins harmlessly away, towards the ground, and to hope for the best. Times like this, he wished Wyl was here instead, but he did his best with what he had.

Iste Confessor had reached Connie and swung.

The sharp crack of the dueling cane shattered resounded through the square. “You don’t want to do this,” Connie said, quietly. “I tried to save you all. I’m sorry.”

Pewter, Kast realised, stunned.

Connie was Mistborn. It was always all or nothing, where Allomancy was concerned.

He was outnumbered again, and Kast hated this, hated this so much. The cold part of him that excelled as a Red Knife knew about tactical retreat, and he supposed even the Watch had drummed into him the importance of not getting into fights he couldn’t win.

He didn’t like how the six had turned on Connie like this, didn’t like how the square had erupted into chaos, didn’t like any of this, but most of all, he hated how he was just one man with a bad leg, who kept ending up in situations he couldn’t do anything about.

He hated it.

There was a loud crash, and a sudden bang! Thick smoke erupted across the village square, and Kast was driven back, coughing, even as his eyes streamed tears. Cojic, he realised. They’d forgotten about Cojic, and Cojic was an alchemist.

He kept burning steel, but the movement of the blue lines told him only a little about what was going on.

By the time the smoke cleared, the square was empty: most of the village having fled to safety. 

Erik scowled down at the still body of the Mistborn. Kast wondered how he’d managed to resist the effects of Cojic’s chemical bombs. 

“Lord Ruler,” Erik said. “This is a complete and utter disaster.”

“You don’t say,” Kast said. He was holding desperately to black humour as a way of coping with how six villagers had apparently, in a pre-meditated act, murdered a fecking Mistborn in the open.

Wyl was never going to let him live this down.

 

 

Truth is, I remember the night after we cracked the Kendricks case as well. The night the whole team cracked beers and celebrated. Maybe it was harsh, after what the kids had suffered. And we were all so damned tired and beaten down. I think it felt unreal. Like we all couldn’t believe it was finally over.

But it felt a bit like a victory. A bit like we’d made a difference, stopping some evil, sick bastard from hurting another kid. And all for the woman who’d come forward. She’d been the big break in the case. 

Sometimes, there are people in this world that watch out for others. And they aren’t even your guard or Watch. Just ordinary people. Neighbours.

I don't know, I guess I was feeling pretty good that night, even though the emptiness was still there. It’d only withdrawn for a little bit.

“You know what you were saying,” Wyl said, as we headed back home. I blinked and tried to figure out what he was referring to. “About stories. About light versus dark.”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re looking at it the wrong way,” he said. “‘Cause from the way I see it, at some point, there must’ve been a great big nothing. Once, there was only ever dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”

A small, broken victory at a time, maybe.

I’d take it.

 

 

Connie was murdered in broad daylight! She was a Village Mistborn! PMs remain open!

Quote

Tani/Connie (6): Araris Valerian, Devotary of Spontaneity, Illwei, Mailliw73, STINK
Araris Valerian (3): Ashbringer, Burnt Spaghetti, Daisy/Hael, TJ Shade
Devotary of Spontaneity (2): _Stick_, Elandera
TJ Shade (1): Fifth Scholar

The Night has begun and will end on 14th March 2021 at 2300hrs SGT (GMT+8)! True Detective and Broadchurch references here utterly intentional

Edited March 13, 2021 by Kasimir