Serpentine Squiggles

A Sword Descending

A little nymph cries over a great dark lake. She sobs and heaves and pushes her paddles but it doesn’t get her anywhere. She shivers.

There is something looking for her, she knows it. A large wave hits the boat and it rocks. She is crying because she is alone and lost and there is a monster in the lake, swimming, hiding, waiting. She saw it.

She paddles harder. Can she get to one of the other boats? They move farther away. Are they leaving because of the monster? More tears coat her green eyes

She sees something moving. One of the boats, the biggest, is gone now, sinking, disappeared in the deep dark lake.

It’s so dark, but it’s getting lighter. At the horizon, the red light is rising. This scares her more, and she rows harder to get so far away, to make it goes back below the horizon. Why does the red sun scare her? Maybe in the light, she would see the monster, and she cannot see it. Should not.

None of the boats are coming for her. She cries more. She will be eaten by the monster. She drops a paddle. She can’t row any more. She tries to reach out and push the water with legs, but it is so cold.

The boat begins to shake. Something hit the boat. It’s not a wave.

Ahem. As always, this is Yanseno Winter​-​child speaking. Today is (pause) Morrowfull, sixth of scattered flame.

(The voice crackles to life — to a semblance of life — in a musty, dimly lit room. Sunlight from a clear sky slips in where it can, dust dancing in its beams, but Yanseno prefers rooms with small windows,

*You can hear a sigh of relief, when the voice comes through. The device — in which a small roll of wax paper is mechanically spun out, allowing a needle to trace along its grooves, imitating stridulation — still works. It’s working from the ground, where it was just dropped. Yanseno had kept his recorder atop a dresser, high enough that someone smaller would have trouble reaching it.)

Where do I begin? This town is fucking cursed. This investigation is fucking cursed. Feels like I’ve had a sword to the back of my neck since I stepped foot in this town and I can’t tell why. (pause) Well, there’s an exception. Her.

So, where do I begin? Starts with Quessa. This new mess does, at least. Starts with Quessa not being here.

’Bout four hours after noon, I got dragged away for Tempit’s self​-​important nonsense. Five hours spent cataloging “evidence”, scrambling for any “witness” to the “crime,” all because some kids vandalized the church and that pointy hatted bitch expected me to treat it like a serious offense. I’ve got the notes I took, but I won’t digress today’s log going over them.

What a waste of time. If I had told her no…

Forget it. There’s bigger storms coming. I’m back at the tavern after sunset, and I heard a gunshot from the east. Quiet, faint echo like it’s from the forest — but you don’t live as long as I do if you don’t know the sound of a gun very well.

I’m back at the tavern, someone’s firing gun, and Quessa’s gone. (Whenever she is, she’d be terrified, best case scenario — swear the kid gets flashbacks from a suspicious pop.)

Throw a cicada tarsign, and now I’m umbrasensing; nowhere in the nearest hundred meters is there any trace of her particular signature. (Copper aligned, convex cohesion, left+kata chirality. Her nous is dark like a nerve crystal and there’s something *so** familiar about that.)

Only two vesperbanes in range, both of them kids. Quessa’s supposed to be here, and I’m worried, so I’m not above a little invasion. Picking a lock’s not beyond me. Door clicks open and it turns out someone is almost paranoid enough — one of them (the red one, no doubt), left some basic tripwires and a deadfall above the door. Ain’t hard to slip past some traps with some aerokinesis, but she gets points for trying.

Kids were sleeping, and I ain’t got nothing on them yet, so I just put some tracking tags on them — basic precaution — and debate waking them back up for questioning anyway. (Waking one up — the little red and white nymph isn’t as good at faking her breathing as she hopes. A quick, light projection to the brain nudges that one back under) Told Boleheva I’d need more time to get a read on them, to see the intentions in their heads — but right now, didn’t matter.

Quessa’s gone, one of their number is gone. Not a coincidence.

How did I want to approach this? Had an arquebus on me. I’m a threat, they’re at my mercy, and those are facts — but did I want to emphasize that? The red one responded well to authority — seemed used to it — but the purple one absolutely did not. So perhaps the play is to wake only the red one —

Then I feel the emergency signal tickle the edge of my senses. Quessa’s emergency signal. First question I was going to ask these two just got answered, so I’m gone. Quessa needed me.