Time Under Chaos | TimeUnderChaos / ReallyMostSincerely browse

Index | Time Under Chaos | Game Logs | Really Most Sincerely

In the hallway, Delluth paused, took a deep breath, and asked Portia, "Can you tell me where the incident we're looking into occurred?" Only a little of the effort of suppressing his general annoyance showed through his courteous tone.

Portia gave the goings on in the room a dark look, then turned and wordlessly nodded to Delluth.

"This way," she said briskly before looking to Tear. "Baroness Helgram, your input may also be of interest. If you would care to follow?"

Solitaire paused for a moment, wavering as she came to an abrupt halt. She glanced up at Portia as if seeing her for the first time. "What? Oh. Oh yes. I suppose it would," she said, rubbing her temples. "But first. Do you have a lavatory? I think. I think I'm going to be sick."

Away from all the tension and strife, she'd begun to shiver noticeably, all the color having drained from her cheeks. She managed a weak smile, trying to regain what little composure she could.

Delluth touched her shoulder. "What did I tell you about exerting yourself?" he said lightly, but with gentle concern.

Solitaire flinched at the touch, but softened a moment later. "It's the stress, Professor," she said simply. "Please. Just let me be."

He nodded understandingly and took his hand away.

Portia's mouth tightened into a line before she turned back to Delluth and Tear, her features softening a bit. "Si, Baroness. This way."

The female Security officer led them down an opposite hallway, passed the open doors of two offices, and opened a door on the left to a rather masculine looking bathroom decorated in rich cream and soft chocolate brown. "I will be just outside if you require assistance."

The young woman offered Portia an appreciative nod, "My thanks." She scurried inside and shut door loudly, the bolt falling into place resoundingly. They could hear the faint sounds of distress, a wretched mixture of weeping and sickness. It faded after a few agonizing moments until only silence remained.

Delluth leaned against the wall to wait, putting effort into setting aside the recent unpleasantness. He still had the damp towel Tear had handed him, and concentrated on analyzing the fatty substance rather than overhearing Tear's distress. His investigations told him that it was a rather repellent amalgamation of human bodily fluids - everything except blood. If sorcery had been employed, it had faded rapidly and left no noticeable after taste (or smell, or any other sense). It was, perhaps, the mark of a supreme sorceror.

Portia developed a sudden cause of deafness and merely kept an eye on the direction they had come from. She could see that Delluth was occupied was his investigation, and refrained from anything that might interrupt his concentration.

He finished with the analysis almost before the sounds from inside the washroom had ended, shrugged, and wiped his fingers on a clean corner of the towel. "I suppose I can leave this in there?" he said quietly, indicating the door they stood outside.

Portia glanced at him briefly before nodding. "Si. I take it there is nothing dangerous there? The Marchesa, she is going to be highly annoyed as it is when she sees the damage to the other room. I would not like to be responsible for something else blowing up."

"Unpleasant, but not dangerous," he said. "Human fat, lymph, urine, various other things. I am interested to see this corpse," he concluded thoughtfully.

A worried voice dispelled the silence beyond the door, growing increasingly frustrated.

"Yes, Uncle. It's very nice, but… No. I understand that, but… But you're… But he… Yes, madam… But they need me to… Yes, madam…"

A brief pause.

"Shut it, fuzz-ball."

Delluth looked bemused by all this.

Silence. And then water ran for a moment, followed by a sharp pound; probably a fist striking the wall. "DAMNIT!"

The door opened up some time later; Solitaire standing in the doorway. She smiled meekly, still pale, but certainly not as sallow as she'd been a few minutes before. "Thank you," she said. "I'm feeling well enough to proceed. My apologies."

"Nothing to apologize for," Delluth said, more than willing to help her put a good face on it all. "But perhaps we should hurry along," he added to Portia.

Solitaire gave a perfunctory nod and fell in along side them. She brushed an elflock away from her cheek, "After you two."

Portia stopped staring at Tear. She turned to Delluth and gestured to the washroom. "If you would like to dispose of that..."

Portia waited for him to do just that and then led them into the office diagonally from the washroom. The rich leathers and dark woods were very much Vincenzo - as were the weapons and maps on the walls. There was a painting of a gleaming white city from the vantage point of a lush green hill across from the desk, and the swarthy duelist Ramon standing in front of an open door to the left, one hand resting lightly on the pommel of his saber.

He arched an eyebrow at Portia as she led the other two towards him. "Move," she snapped.

Ramon just rolled his eyes and stepped aside, sketching a bow to the two Chaosians as they enter the sparsely furnished holding area. Portia paused to speak lowly with Ramon a moment then entered as well. Ramon disappeared from the doorway, but did not leave the outer office.

Delluth paused in the doorway to make a quick, comprehensive survey of the room.

Then he crossed to the body and crouched beside it, making a quick visual examination before proceeding to more in-depth analysis.

Solitaire smiled faintly at Ramon before stepping into the room. At the sight of the body, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. The revulsion passed quickly, replaced by scientific detachment. Her eyes began to darken into oily pits as she invoked her Logrus Sight. Pacing through the room, she tried to look beyond the physical evidence present to anything lying beyond normal perception.

The power of sorcery overlaying the Logrus was very strong here - and it was swiftly apparent what had happened.

The token and the man had been intimately connected - it seemed as though the token were a kind of a trump that had been created from some part of the man's own essence. As soon as another had attempted to use it, there had been a massive reaction; the unfortunate man's bodily fluids had been sucked away through the token, the last backsplash of this having caught the unfortunate Goran.

Whether the token had been made with the man's knowledge and consent or against his will was a moot point.

"Definitely murder," Delluth noted briskly. "I wonder if he knew it could happen?"

Portia seemed about to say something, but changed her mind at the last minute and just pursed her lips into a line.

"Very clever," Solitaire said, impressed. She smiled with a keen appreciation as she examined the Weavings of the sorcery. "I'd considered working on something like this. But it never came to fruition." She added, "Not for this purpose, of course."

"Thank the Serpent," she muttered, having realized Goran could just as easily been consumed by the spell.

Solitaire made a slight movement with her hand and then withdrew a pair of spectacles from the folds of her dress. She slipped the golden frames onto her nose, erasing her eyes behind thin circles of smoky glass. After retrieving a stylus from her ever-present notebook, she walked over to the body and began to scan it intently. The glasses began to glow with a ruddy light, not unlike the eerie depths of the Abyss. She poked about on the melted corpse with the end of her stylus, trying to find the focal point for the effect; a centralized connection to the man's essence, much like the chakras of ancient philosophy. If she could discover that focal point, she might be able to unveil whatever sympathetic connection might remain between the victim and the caster.

Portia eyed the proceedings warily. The body itself didn't seem to bother her, but like Ramon, she didn't seem very happy to be there. She kept glancing over her shoulder towards the hall.

Delluth paused in his inspection of the body, glancing up at the intrusion of the glasses' activity into his perceptions, but put off questions until later. "It seems to be missing just about everything except blood," he said to Tear, speaking loudly enough that no one would think they were keeping secrets. "Vitreous humour, lymph, gall, what have you. Where do you suppose it went? I can't imagine him wanting to be covered in miscellaneous human fluids ..."

Delluth could gather, from his examination, that the fluids had been drawn from every orifice on the unfortunate man's body - simultaneously and with such extreme force that the others present would not have understood what was occurring. Tear was discovering much the same thing.

Solitaire adjusted the glasses down her nose as she turned to look at Delluth. The polished lenses continued to undulate and pulse with an inner light. "If the token were still here. I think I'd have a better answer to your question," she announced with some embarrassment.

"It must have been some form of Shadow conduit," she said. "Siphoning off his vital essence to some other location. But it could have ended up anywhere, really. Not necessarily where the original caster is located."

She stood up and found something to wipe off her soiled stylus. "We may have enough of him to establish a sympathetic connection. With the. Rest of his. Remains. At least I think. If they aren't in this Shadow, however, such a search could take days. Weeks. Maybe forever."

Solitaire rubbed her bare shoulders, as if feeling a chill. "I can certainly try to find the rest of him. But I'd need someone to watch over me. To pull me back, so to speak. If things go wrong."

"Not tonight," Delluth said firmly. "You're too tired." He pushed himself to his feet also, and actually staggered a little. "*I'm* too tired," he added, regaining his balance.

"And I can't see it as relevant, anyway. The clear link to the man's essence ... the Logrus Sorcerer in question had a reason to kill him in particular."

Solitaire appeared slightly dubious about this assessment, but said nothing. She folded her glasses and returned them to the shadowy confines of her dress. "Most likely he was a spy or an assassin for…" she paused before saying who. Her hand moved to her ear, lightly tugging on it as she considered this silently for a moment.

Then she added, "His master probably placed this spell on his person to prevent him from talking during interrogation. But something interfered with it, requiring him to draw more power from his surroundings. That's undoubtedly why we felt that moment of nausea at the castle ..."

"Pattern use, no doubt," Delluth said. "It'd monkey with anything, I'm sure."

Delluth turned to Portia; he had not yet dispersed the Logrus Sight, so his eyes presented an unnervingly inhuman aspect. "Do you know who he was?"

Portia reached a hand into her jacket and pulled out a small notebook. She begins flipping through it.

As Delluth began speaking with Portia, Solitaire moved closer to the corpse and touched the base of its spine with her tiny fingers.

If she was looking for a response, she would have been disappointed. There was none - and the flesh felt cool and slack against her fingers.

"Damn," Solitaire muttered, removing her hand from the corpse. She began scanning the room for some clean water or alcohol to sterilize her hands. "My work here is done, I should think. Unless you need me for something else."

Her violet eyes went from Delluth to Portia and back again, questioning.

Portia looked up from her note checking. "He is - was - Lord Montcalm of Eregnor. Research indicates his father lays claim to the defunct Throne of Eregnor. It was his first visit to the Queen. He came as a guest of bin Fremen of Kashfa, who is a well liked regular." She flipped the book closed and returned it to her pocket. "Bin Fremen is across the hall. I do not believe he had anything to do with this. He looked horrified at what was happening on the floor, when this one attacked one of the girls."

"Attacked?" Delluth looked appropriately appalled. "Well, that explains a lot," he went on, shaking his head. "Poor judgment and an interesting political status ..."

He did not finish his thought aloud, but dropped the Logrus Sight once more and glanced at Tear. "This is all we can do, I agree," he said, and started moving back out into Vincenzo's office.

Solitaire curled her lip back and hissed a breath through her teeth. "He must have been acting on orders. Or been under someone's control. After all. Everyone knows the repercussions for attacking a woman here." Having cleaned her hands, she could now return to tugging on her ear thoughtfully. "I wonder if he meant to stir up trouble. To attract the attention he did, I mean. Perhaps it was a set up?"

"Or maybe he was just stupid," Delluth remarked easily. "Sometimes people are."

She shrugged and headed toward the door. "Either way. I can't do much more here."

She paused and looked up at Portia. "If your Mistress requires me. She undoubtedly knows where to find me."

Portia nodded to her and preceded them out of the office to wait in the hall to escort them as needed.

"Solitaire," Delluth said, just inside Vincenzo's office. He looked at her seriously, concern briefly overriding all the other things on his mind, visible in his face. "Talk to me? Tomorrow?"

"If I'm still in Amber, I'll have some tea ready for you," Solitaire said with all seriousness. "If not, Master Vikund has a trump of me. At least I suspect so. And considering the circumstances of our last encounter. He owes me a favor."

She smiled faintly, "Thank you for trying to help me tonight. Goodbye, Professor."

Solitaire headed toward the nearest exit.

(Tear and Portia continue in Vanishing Act

(Delluth continues in TBD)