ZincAboutIt

Congrats Ene, this is now relevant

Lita saw the cave, the memory painting itself over her eyes almost before Laurelai spoke. She saw the tunnel, the strange glowing plants, the sheer drop into endless darkness. They had followed her hearing - tin had let her pick up the faintest echo of falling water. “ — and you walked to the pool but it was whispering to me and telling me to take it instead. So I.. I reached out and pulled you away, and then the pool whispered more. Told me everything, everything there was to know." No, Lita’s mind murmured. No, that isn’t right. She had stepped in first; she had nearly fallen in, her foot sliding backwards into the pool to balance herself, and the water had poured down over her head in terrible, glorious rivulets. Time stopped, the world itself stopped what it was doing and slid through the cracks between Lita’s atoms, flooding her with all that she could ever wish to know. The memory folded and shifted, and then Lita saw Laurelai’s pale face tilted upward in rapture, almost worship, as that same cool blue water trickled over her cheeks like tears. Then it faded, and Lita caught the moment when Laurelai resurfaced from her reverie. The implications of this, a shared phantom memory of the same event, were not lost on Lita. So many new threads to follow, so many complex knots to pull and untangle and slice. New secrets to hunt. But just now, Lita felt her hunger focus on much closer prey. A loose thread that Lita had already begun to unravel. It was time to pull a little harder, now. ”Thank you, Laurelai,” Lita said, voice soft as smoke, hot as fire. “And for your reward…” Lita let one hand trail down the plane of Laurelai’s abdomen, fingertips pressing into skin through soft silk. She stoked her tin to climb a bit higher, letting her catch the racing beat of Laurelai’s pulse where it fluttered against the thin, soft skin of her neck. Lita wanted to lean forward, to close the distance and feel that softness, that urgent thrum, against her mouth. And so she did. @Voidus

They took the long way back to Lita’s office, ostensibly because Laurelai was in no shape to Alleytravel. But in truth, Lita simply enjoyed towing Laurelai alongside her. She watched the blonde drift like a kite, blue eyes fixed on a point far away, fevered and drunken. Lita kept her hand on Laurelai’s wrist as they walked, feeling the staccato beat of her pulse against the tips of her fingers. Tin burned comfortably in her stomach, and as Lita neared the door of her office she allowed herself to revel in the feeling. She could almost taste the need in the air, could almost hear Laurelai slowly fracture. Lita grinned, and it was sharp, and cruel, and beautiful. “I don't remember a storm." Laurelai said, speaking at last as they stood before the door. "But I remember rain. Quiet and gentle and dangerous as all the Alleys." Lita unlocked the door, and Laurelai’s words dripped in through her ears, collecting until they fell like fat drops of ink into the water of her memory. Rain, rain falling hundreds of feet below the earth. The smell of wet stone, the crunch of powdery dust beneath her feet. And the reflection of blue light off the walls of a narrow grotto. Lita closed the door, sliding the lock with more force than strictly necessary as the strange phantom memory began to move out of the shadow of her mind. She dropped Laurelai’s hand, turning to look at her, and though Laurelai’s eyes were fixed on her face Lita knew that she wasn’t truly seeing her - she was seeing something else. And Lita could see it too. Laurelai continued to speak, her words conjuring more than a vague imagining in Lita’s mind. She was there. She heard that whispered beckoning, the screaming danger warring with a powerful urge to step forward, to reach out. To take and be taken in return. An urge stronger even than hunger - a deep and rending thirst. Laurelai’s breath was coming ragged now, her eyes closed but flicking back and forth beneath her eyelids as though she were in a dream. Or a nightmare. Lita moved closer, the slightest hint of unease seeming only to amplify the searing heat of her mood. Here was a secret to tease out expertly, a loose thread that had so willingly laid itself in Lita’s hand. If she pulled slowly and carefully enough, could Lita follow it back to its source? These aberrant memories, the flashes of deja vu, the secret department - it was all connected, she could feel it. The lure of that secret stoked the familiar heat of anticipation. Lita wanted to taste it. She needed Laurelai to keep talking. “Do you know the first rule of interrogation, Laurelai?” Lita brushed a stray lock of silvery-blonde hair back behind Laurelai’s ear, letting her finger trace down the back and along the edge of Laurelai’s jaw. “After all, not everyone is so generous with their secrets as I am.” ”Sometimes,” Lita continued, moving behind Laurelai now, sweeping her long curtain of hair over her opposite shoulder to expose the pale, graceful expanse of her neck, “you will need to be extra persuasive.” Lita was grateful for the height of her heels, which made them nearly on equal footing. Her mouth reached just perfectly to the hollow curve behind Laurelai’s ear. ”The first rule,” Lita whispered, “is to learn what someone wants. And only when they have given you all the information you require do you let them have it.” Lita allowed her lips to just barely graze the curve of Laurelai’s neck where it met her shoulder, her skin intoxicatingly soft to Lita’s tin-enhanced senses. Lita felt herself falling into the sensation and pulled back on the reigns of her own wants. A novice rushed a job; an expert took her time. Laurelai was a thread worth winding around each one of her fingers until she finally snapped. ”Let us have a practical lesson, you and I,” Lita said, sliding back into Laurelai’s field of vision. The young woman’s eyes were half-lidded and dark with yearning. Lita leaned forward until only the barest fraction of an inch separated them. “Tell me everything you see in your memories, Laurelai, and then I’ll give you exactly what you want.” @Voidus

It’s finally happened, someone thinks I’m in charge around here. In truth I have no idea, you’ll have to ask our most excellent ruler, Voidus. Though I would think it might depend on what your character’s specialties are. If I recall she is/was a scribe? That might be a logical ability in that case. But again, I have no actual power here.

Tashi swept the three firemarks off the bar with one hand and reached beneath the bar with the other to open a small refrigerator. She took out a chilled glass and set it beneath a single tap, pulling the handle until the foam reached the rim. ”There you go, gancho,” she said with a wink, pushing the glass toward the newcomer. “Always nice to meet another Rosharan. And I’ll just check the book to see which room is left over…” Tashi ducked over to the register book, then took a key off a hook labeled “6”. “There you go,” she said, setting the key beside the glass of lager. “I’ll admit, I haven’t seen an Alethi order lager before.” @Shining Silhouette

“Your files, Ms. Attar.” Azim’s cool, dry voice was blank as new parchment as he set the stack of files on the table. Lita felt some of the heat dissipate from the air, the tension momentarily slackened. She let her eyes slide away from Laurelai’s, resting instead on the stack of files. ”Thank you, Azim,” Lita said, her voice soft, steady - so at odds with the raw heat surging through her blood. “As always, your timing is impeccable.” ”Indeed,” the Singer responded, tone still utterly unreadable. “Will you be taking these records back with you, then?” Lita felt her lips curve upward ever so slightly, raising a single auburn brow. She looked back at Laurelai, still balanced on the edge of her fingernail. The blonde’s blue eyes were flicking between the stack of papers and Lita’s face with ravenous indecision. The color high on her cheeks had deepened and crept down her neck; Tin allowed Lita to see her pulse where it fluttered in her throat like a caged bird. The liquid thrum from earlier stirred again, coiling in her core. ”Why, yes we shall.” Lita released the pressure of her nail from Laurelai’s chin, allowing her finger to trace down the young woman’s neck. “Laurelai,” Lita continued, heat lacing her words like poison, “do be a dear and gather those records, will you? It wouldn’t do to get my blood all over them. So terribly inconsiderate.” ”Terribly,” Azim echoed drily before turning and walking back to his desk in the center of the main room. Lita stood and dragged the back of her left hand across her lip, leaving a smear of blood on the skin. It stung lightly, and Lita grinned into the pain. There was a single droplet of Lita’s blood on Laurelai’s palm, the crimson stark against her pale skin. Lita clicked her tongue and took the handkerchief from the tabletop, pressing it into Laurelai’s hand. Then she wrapped her fingers around Laurelai’s wrist and tugged her forward, up out of the chair. Laurelai was taller, but Lita felt nothing but power as she looked up into her eyes. Laurelai was helpless with desperation, drowning in it. Lita felt the electric thrill of the realization that she could demand anything at all in return for more information. Secrets of her own, certainly. Knowledge was power, and there were ever so many ways to know a person, weren’t there? “Come, Laurelai,” she said, tightening her grip on Laurelai’s wrist to just below the point of pain. “Let us go and settle your debt.” She ran her tongue along the cut in her lip, which had started to bleed again with the force of her smile. Beneath the heat of her fingers, Lita could feel the icy veneer of Laurelai Esserethel begin to melt and crack. @Voidus

A Herdazian-looking woman in her mid-twenties leaned over the bar, smiling brightly. ”You’re just in time, gancho. Nearly all booked! But I’ve got a room if you’ve got the money. I’ll warn you though, you be careful about that blade. Draw it here in anger and you’re out.” The momentary stern expression on her face cleared back into a sunny grin. “Name’s Tashi. Can I get you a drink?” @Shining Silhouette

Crimson bloomed from the Professor’s hand, and Bennington tugged hard on the tether, allowing himself his first proper drink in… well, technically forever. The taste was strong and dark, fascination layered atop hunger, curiosity over desperation, excitement over mania, distraction over rage. Rage layered over an endless well of sorrow. Bennington drank deeply, and the few hairline cracks in the Professor’s sanity split wider and ground further in, further and further until he finally stopped. The thread that bound them was thicker now, it’s width strained and stuffed with violet light. Bennington turned a lazy, sated loop, and whatever realm it was that held the truth of his form shook and trembled at his satisfaction. Nox paid for his items, including, Bennington was pleased to note, the long sharp knife. Vivica would have approved, she would have clapped her cool, slender little hands and danced in place, wide blue eyes alight with fevered excitement. She would not have bought the dye. But, that was to be remedied at a later time. Let the Professor play at mixing paints, taking notes with all the careful precision of a scientist. All the while remembering that perfect color on his skin, on the steel edge of the knife. The perfect consistency as it curved over the edge of his palm. It was impossible to fully recreate. Vivica had tried many times. Science had truly improved so much in the world. But there was just no improving on the rich crimson perfection of blood. Bennington followed the Professor home, listening as he hummed tunelessly. After this world unraveled, and he had cast that arrogant one eyed godling into the vastness of the Endless Determinance, Vivica would come back. She had to come back. But until then, Bennington took another long drink. Waste not, want not. @Voidus

Lita continued to watch Laurelai struggle with her expression, her eyes growing a bit distant, then closing altogether as she breathed rhythmically. She didn’t miss the light flush of color high on the blonde’s cheeks, a heat that whispered its own echo down Lita’s neck, tracing a molten line over the ladder of her rib cage and ending in a low, throbbing ache. Lita felt her fingers move to the little pocket of her dress, drawing out the golden coin and running her thumb across its surface. She wanted to melt it in her palm and drink it like wine. She wanted to forge it into a spike and bury it deep inside her heart. “Lita." Laurelai said, her voice cautious, careful. "We've spoken of these... flashes. The ones that some people have been having. Memories that aren't real, deja vu..." She stopped, face pensive, and Lita was about to speak when Laurelai continued. “What do you see in them? What can you remember?" Lita felt, more than heard, the world crack ever so slightly around her, and for a moment the bottom dropped out of her gut and everything was darkness and free fall. Then she was back in her body, green eyes flicking upwards like twin serpents, keen and coiled, tasting the air. She met Laurelai’s stare, and she was gazing into a sheet of ice, flawless aside from a single fissure that sliced through both of those frozen eyes. Such a slender crack, but it ran right to the core of her soul. Lita could feel how much she wanted to know, needed to know, the way a moss addict needed the burn on his fingers, the way a starving beggar needed something to eat. The pitiless master of raw need had Laurelai so deeply in its grasp that Lita knew she’d dance naked on broken glass for the answers, if Lita so chose. ”You speak out of turn, Laurelai Esserethel,” Lita said softly, and her voice was the snick of a switchblade against the quiet of the Department of Records. “Your tongue has run away with your head. Your desire for knowledge has leashed you and ridden you into the dirt.” She leaned forward, fingers still spinning the coin. No, not the coin. The Coin. Her Coin. She could feel something against her fingertips, a raised image, a stamp on each face. Somehow she knew them without looking - a set of scales, perfectly balanced, and a skull with a spike driven through the left eye socket. Anything was attainable, but there was always a price. “I know that feeling,” Lita whispered. “Food has no taste. Water does nothing to slake your thirst. You can’t sleep, and when you do your dreams turn into nightmares, and then your nightmares torture you so exquisitely that they turn back into dreams, and you awake drenched in your bed, trembling and sick, and there’s nothing you want more than to cut your throat on the knife of your Hunger.” She was much too close now, and she felt the burn of Tin in her stomach turning up the volume on the world. Too much sight, too much sound, too much sensation on her skin. “You want to know what I remember?” Lita put one finger under Laurelai’s chin, lifting it so that the edge of one crimson nail bit slightly into her porcelain skin. “I remember a Storm. I remember rain like ice cutting into my skin, and wind biting into my gums as I smiled so hard it felt like I would rip my own flesh. I remember a Tin flare so high that I could feel the floor of the alley through the soles of my boots, and I remember lightning behind the figure of a god that people only speak about in stories. But he was real. And he gave me a choice. Power, or Subtlety?” ”Do you know what it is to feel yourself come apart, Laurelai?” Lita could feel herself trembling with the weight of the memory. “That moment when steel hits your blood, and agony arcs through your body like white fire, lighting every nerve until your mind is undone, and the threshold between pain and ecstasy is blurred and blended through your own tears?” Lita bit her lip hard enough to taste blood; it felt right. It felt like someone else’s teeth on her skin. It felt like a ravenous fever, like black curls against a light blue door. It felt like her own fingernails cutting scratches into the little table where she’d once met a clever shadow. It felt like her name on the tongue of a hungry god. ”Because that is what I remember. It is what is painted on the back of my eyes with every blink. It is in every quiet moment, in every uneasy silence. It haunts me like a revenant. And do not think that you will leave this room until you have paid for that secret to my satisfaction.” @Voidus

The obvious solution is to simply never stop tapping bronze of course

Oh yeah the mental fracture is real

Just obtain some Bronze compounding. Though that might actually put you over the point count. But, it definitely works. I have a character who’s entire underpinning is this refusal to sleep due to nightmares. The side effects are hardcore though XD

Edit: Also @SymphonianBookworm, I have a foolproof solution for never sleeping again. It’s a little unconventional but very, very effective.

Girl on Fire I’ve wanted to draw this for a long time

Hello! This is the place to discuss character ideas. I would say that you might actually consider acrobatics skill as well for a circus performer. As far as ascending to a Shard… I don’t think that’s really possible these days. We’ve about topped out on demigods.

Lita watched Azim turn to go, his face pinched slightly. She knew enough to realize her request had him both curious and worried - no one ever requested to go all the way back. And what if he finds nothing at all? The premise had Lita itching to chew on one of her lacquered fingernails, but she stopped herself. If he found nothing, then it meant that she and Laurelai would get their answers from Ronald Darsen. And if he did find something… well, the idea of a secret Department was both fascinating and disturbing. Lita would be a fool to think she’d discovered every secret the Dark Alley had to offer, after all, that’s what had led her here in the first place. Laurelai had begun speaking, asking about an index of some sort. Lita was about to answer but the blonde kept going, her eyes taking on a faraway cast but somehow sharpening at the same time. There was an echo of something there, at the core of her gaze, something that Lita felt she ought to understand. The blue of her eyes almost seemed to shimmer, like light on water. ”Sorry,” Laurelai said, breaking the trance-like state with a breath. “I suppose that was my inner scholar coming out a bit.” Lita blinked, tearing her own eyes away from Laurelai’s. She smiled reassuringly at the woman, who was doing her best to rearrange her features back into their typical cool serenity. Something happened there, Lita thought, cocking her head to the side. There was a sort of perverse pleasure in seeing Laurelai so off her guard. Lita felt that golden thrum in the air again, the liquid shimmer that had run through her body ever since she had woken up. For one moment Lita entertained the thought of taking Laurelai’s chin between her fingers, cracking that porcelain veneer like an eggshell and pulling the fevered desperation out of her inch by inch. The things I could offer you, Lita’s mind whispered in a voice not entirely her own. Knowledge, power, that drop in your gut as you plunge over the edge into utter free fall. And damn the cost. Dash yourself against the rocks of your own ravenous need. Your blood and your sanity will drip down into the hungry sea like fine wine. And I will gladly drink whatever’s left of you, even as you sear my tongue with your fire, my Little Lita. Snap! Lita looked down, the odd voice forgotten, at the two halves of the golden pen in her hands. Rusts. “No need to apologize,” Lita said smoothly, setting the two halves of pen aside. “At least half of spycraft is scholarship. Information is as good as gold, in my opinion. Better, even. Gold weighs down the pockets, which ruins the line of a dress.” Lita winked. @Voidus

Bennington watched as the Professor began to eye the young man slumped against the brick. He gave a gentle tug on the thread that bound them, tasting the Professor’s mind, his thoughts. The cracks were not yet wide enough for Bennington to see directly into his mind - that would come later. But for now, the thread was enough. Good. Nox’s musings were taking him down very familiar avenues. He looped encouragingly, finally settling as the man’s thoughts circled tighter and tighter around that one scarlet singularity. But wait - what was that? A flash of blue, bright and cool, rippled over the Professor’s face like light across water. He froze, hand outstretched, and Bennington could taste the dread. The terror. The desire. Something her happened, something that Vivica had not predicted. Something that even Bennington did not yet understand. It troubled him. Nox turned abruptly and strode back out into the street, off to the shop. Bennington followed, watching his host, thinking. What could draw a man such as him with such depth? Such force? What could possibly match the thread that bound them? Bennington thought on these matters as they continued down the street, towards the market, in the search for the perfect red. He would not find it there. But he would find it soon. @Voidus

A Cruel Worship

Red, Red, Red

What kind of fool stops after their first bargain??

I have not, but I do think I have heard of him

"Where do we start?" Lita looked over her shoulder at Laurelai, who stood gaping at the endless shelves with awed avarice. She had the stunned, starving look of a street dog that had suddenly found itself in a butcher shop. Lita knew she had better throw her a bone soon, or she’d bolt for the nearest shelf and start gnawing on the scrolls. ”This way,” Lita said with a small smirk. Interesting enough indeed. If someone looked at Lita the way Laurelai was looking at the nearest filing cabinet, she’d already have her dress halfway off. She led them past the forest of desks and their scribbling occupants towards a slightly broader, more elevated desk. A slender Singer man in Scholarform looked up as she tapped two fingers on the desktop. He wore a pair of silvery spectacles and had his hair strands braided into a complex tail that fell down the back of his grey robes. Azim had always dressed as an Ardent, which Lita found odd - though she was not sure why. He also had enough spikes in his chest to open a hardware store. Surely that was odder. “Ms. Attar,” he said softly, his voice slightly rhythmic. Lita had not learned much about the Singer Rhythms, but she was fairly certain this was one of the formal ones. Respect, perhaps? “How may I help you?” ”Azim,” Lita responded, inclining her head slightly. Azim was not technically the Head of the Department of Records, but he was absolutely it’s ruler in all but official title. She hadn’t expected him to be working today, but she appreciated the stroke of luck. Azim had a memory like a Coppermind, which she guessed was technically true, as he was a copper compounder. He basically was the library catalog. ”This,” Lita gestured to her side, “is Laurelai Esserethel, my newest acolyte. Laurelai, this is Azim, Herald of Records.” Lita winked at Azim, who sighed slightly. “How you don’t cut yourself with that tongue of yours I’ll never know.” His voice had changed slightly, and Lita was sure he was secretly pleased. “Well met, Laurelai Esserethel.” He nodded to Laurelai. “Now, what is this flattery for, Ms. Attar? You only ever compliment me when you need a favor.” Lita placed a hand on her heart in mock offense, then slipped a single sheet of paper from a pocket and slid it to Azim. “I need to know if there’s anything in the Department on this person. Go back as far as you can. All the way, if possible.” Azim gave her a long look, then he read the paper. “All… the way. All the way?” Lita leaned on the desk. “Yes. All the way back.” @Voidus

The Professor was going quite mad; Bennington was rather pleased with himself. At least as much as one such as he could feel pleasure. He was pretty sure it was different than how mortal, corporeal beings felt the sensation, but he had never been able to ask properly. Speaking directly into the mind of a human tended to immediately render them insensate. The mind just…liquified. Delicious, yes. But not particularly illuminating. Bennington took another pull from the bonding thread, cautioning himself to remain patient. He did not have the same attachment to the Professor as he had had to Vivica; she was a meal to be savored over the course of a lifetime. But this man was mortal veneer over a vast well of deific Void. Bennington could drink forever and never run to the bottom. He could pull and pull and pull on the tether until the violet light ran through it like lightning over wire, glutting himself on madness until the light spun out of every star and even the gaping maws of black holes had collapsed into Nothing. But that was a careless mistake, and Bennington was not careless. He had waited for an eternity in the Endless Determinance. He could wait a matter of weeks to avoid cracking the veneer before it was time. But perhaps just one more sip… The Professor had been walking down a busy main street, his pace relaxed, but his eyes were flicking across the passerby with a slightly predatory air. Bennington knew that look - Vivica had worn it when she went “shopping” as well. The Professor was beginning to feel it now, that crimson lure, the itch to know warmth between his fingers, slick and coppery. Bennington decided to help him, and darted down a smaller street, where people who were not likely to be missed gathered in pairs or, even more convenient, huddled alone against stone walls and under eaves. @Voidus

It’s been a very slow relaxed pace here, no worries