♂ ASHES, Storei's Quietus

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Hesitate |[ . . . ..
Week III:
March 29th, 1411

Quote:

Those crows and letters have suddenly begun to drop like flies from the sky, leaving nothing but crow corpses. On the flip-side, there's no more parchment whatsoever that's being delivered to you. What's strange, though, is that when you try to pick up any of those crows that are laying dead in thousands of masses across the street, they're extremely heavy-- heavier than a horse, you reckon, and you have no idea why. When you do, though, it stings your hand, and even if they've only recently died, they smell a hell of a lot like months-old corpse.
If you even try to touch any of these crows, you're going to feel heavily incapacitated for the next couple of days-- the more crows you're around the more sick you'll be. It'll look like you have the Black Death, in fact, each and every one of you, with black-tipped fingers and swollen buboes around your body but completely hidden from sight. How do you feel, now that you know what true sickness is?
This effect will only last for a few days, maybe just a day for you, three or four at most, but that's all it takes it kill a regular person, anyway. Do you trust your instincts and rumors that your Plague will protect you from the Black Death and move on, or are you starting to have your doubts?

For the first time in his move to Lord Yizhaq's estate, young page Chauhn was given a different task to accomplish other than running messages and carrying firewood. This time he had to pick up dead crows. Woken up by another servant in the hallway, Chauhn left his room early in the morning when just the rosy tint of morning was spilling into the sky, his heavy coat pulled over his arms as he was shuffled to the site of the garish image of black. He didn't expect to have his Plague with him for this task, not when he was still pulling himself together (literally) from his run-in with the Obscuvians, so he pulled himself away from his protective watch over the servant wing, and stepped outside into the cold blue snow.

Before him was a field of dead crows.

Unsettled, Chauhn buttoned up his collar and sunk his feet into the thin layer of spring snow, crunching forward in slow suspicious steps. Other servants were about with him, walking carefully out into the courtyard, where the majority of the dead murder was located. Beyond them was a couple guards keeping watch, switching their weight from leg to leg as they eyed the fallen birds. He dreaded another happenstance with ribbons. He could easily imagine it, it being not that long ago when he was first chased down this very stretch of courtyard by the murder, birds swarming up from the ground, billowing up about him and whisking him off into some magical darkness where he would waste away with hunger. Some imagined evil was far more terrifying what laid before him now, but what made the dead crows all the more horroifying was the possibility of them inciting some other nightmarish attack. At least he wasn't alone, Chauhn thought, with the heightened security about the premises thanks to Clurie and Hayat's run in with the Obscuvian, his safety was more and more reassured by the precense of more guards, good volunteers and followers of the Fellowship. Regardless, everyone was nervous, but Chauhn couldn't blame them when so many dead crows were scattered about, like the darkness of night above their heads had splintered and rained down in shattered fragments.

What hit them first about the garish scene was the smell, a rotten kind of smell that rolled over the senses with a dead weight as if intending to crush them. Chauhn wasn't the only one to gag a bit as they stepped closer to the crows, and they all had to adjust, pinch their noses shut and pathetically gasp with their mouths despite the faint taste they would feel in the backs of their throats, or tie their scarves about their faces in a useless effort to block out the fetid stench. Chauhn was used to gross smells, although his time in Shyregoad had softened him, and he was the first to push past the wall of eye-watering stench, and begin the effort. Kneeling down in the snow, Chauhn unshouldered the bag that he had brought with him to put the birds in for disposal, giving a cough into his sleeve as he knelt listening to the sounds of the other servants blanch and hiss as they also knelt down to begin the pick up. Of all of them, he was the one Grimm, all the other Grimms having been sanctioned away from mulling about in the open thanks to the rise in intensity, even within the supposedly safe borders of Lord Yizhaq's walls. They treated him with the kind of respect that was only spawned from worry grown by rumors and it made him long to return to familiar faces.

Digging his fingers into the snow underneath the dead crow before him, sitting mangled and frozen on the ice, Chauhn prepared to pick it up by the tip of its wing before he strained and paused in surprise. It didn't burst into black ribbons. Why was he straining? Not only that, but when he wrapped his hand about them, a bright sting zapped its way up his arms, and he had to adjust a few times to even suffer through that sting long enough to give a worthwhile effort.Attempting again, Chauhn pinched his fingers and then his knuckles as he adjusted for a better grip and pulled, discovering, just as the other servants about him were, that the crows were not as feather light as they expected them to be. No matter how he pulled, no matter how he strained, positioned himself, or prepared his body with a few steady breaths, a pull, and a yank, he could not pick up the dead crow. Chauhn bit his lip, growling between his bit teeth as he pulled with all his might. He focused on his entire body's weight, throwing his pitch, digging his heels into the ground, and loudly grimacing as his fingers threatened to slip on the slick black feathers, and, to his surprise, in response to his voice, the earth beneath him trembled and up sprouted a branch underneath the crow, warping and bending as it attempted, and failed like Chauhn and the other servants to lift up the bird, or even flip it over. Instead it gnarled itself, snapped, and gave up when Chauhn stopped using his voice.

Falling back onto the snow when his achey hands released, Chauhn narrowed his gaze at the supernatural crow, and rubbed his knuckles.

Getting up onto his knees, staring doubtfully at the fields of crows about him, the servant tip toed between the black, testing the dead bodies with the nudge of his foot and the dig of his toe. He might as well had been trying to knock over a well rooted tree with only the strength of his toes. It was useless. He glanced about at the other servants, who stood about with concerned knits of the brows, neither willing to give up or go back with slumped shoulders to report their failure to clean up the horrid mess to their Lord. By the time that Chauhn had meandered towards the center of the dead murder, other servants were beginning to file back towards the estate, mentioning to each other in whispers that carried over the snow like shouts that there was nothing they could do to remove the curse. That was when the fever hit.

Mistaking the slow rise of heat for the effort he had exported to the task of picking up the leaden crows, Chauhn had little time to digest the fact that the cold of the snow was failing to absorb his warmth before it boiled up into his head and leaked into his glassy eyes. He blinked a few times, stupidly looking back across the field of crows as his gaze fogged up with the heat of the breath pushing out of his lungs in frantic gasps. Had he really tired himself that out that much? Was he fragile to begin with, or was the cold sapping his strength? He tried to steady his breathing. He had a lot of other things to do today, especially if he was still filling in for his Plague. Chauhn's head began to swim. Like it had been filled halfway with water, Chauhn's head dipped forward and then rolled back, struggling to keep balance as the heaviness sloshed to and fro. It was too heavy. With hardly a sound passing the clench of his teeth, the Clemmings boy took a few backwards stumbles and dropped to the white while his consciousness dropped into black, his will still desperately holding on to semi-wakefulness.

Nearby servants who noticed his quiet fall gasped and scampered closer to help, but they came no closer when they saw the boils pushing through the collar of his neck, the beads of sweat failing to frost over because of the heat blushing the curves of his face. His eyes were still open, glossy and staring up at the gray of the overcast sky as he panted and shook with quiet convulsions in his bed of ice. It was all too clear what he had developed, the servants, nay, all the residents of Panymium knew it well by its early symptoms, taught in rhymes and increasing experience as more and more people dropped ill with it every day.

"Plague! Plague!" they screamed, leaping back from him over the bodies of the crows, "He has the plague!" Cowering to each other the servants checked themselves over, rolling down their scarves and collars to check for any signs of their own, and once they were assured that they wouldn't be soon lying down with Chauhn in the white, they clucked to each other in panicked bursts of questions. What to do? They couldn't leave him out there, not when he was so highly looked after by the Lord himself, a young and precious Grimm...His Plague. His Plague could maneuver him without fear. Ordering the fleetest of feet to seek out the Clemmings Plague, the collective of servants stepped slowly back with terror, their footsteps crunching with the ice that formed a frame for the stricken boy Grimm collapsed in the center of a spattering of cursed black crows. Even from their far distance, they could see his fingers twitch and slowly but surely fade to hues of black.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Fleeting & Fleeting Fears |[ . . . ..
March 30th, 1411

Quote:

If you've managed to fight of the Obscuvans, and good job, it looks like many of you have-- they're not going to try again any time soon, it doesn't seem like, and the ribbon dropping has ceased as well as the stalkings from your Grimm. What's bad is that if you've come in contact with any of these cultist folk, if you were engaged in battle especially, you're going to feel a little bit strange-- bated, even. Not only are you going to lose many of your Plague characteristics if you fought with a cultist, you're going to look completely like a human and act like one, too. What does that feel like for you?
Congratulations-- someone has found a miasmic form of the Furvus Elixir, and it's working at its full intensity.
To those Plagues who were lavished with gifts, the Holy Wife has seemed to have given you something as well-- a heightened sense of power. Not only do you feel light as a feather, you feel a need to do something. Act for Obscuvos. In your height of power, what do you do to please the Holy Wife and Obscuvos, with your birth-given magic?

Clurie woke up to the sound of rapping knuckles on his door, a thumping noise that tied in tandem with the tabor of his breathing. He was dreaming, again the size of a matchstick and running from Chauhn, whose mangled urchin clothes were riddled with roots that dived in and out of his blemished skin in knots and tangles, a monster with green eyes reaching to ensnare him with those vines and branches. Trying to fight him away, he tried to clap sparks, summon fire, anything, but when Clurie looked down at himself, he was soft and fleshy, and he could hear Chauhn choking with joy, "My little brother...My little brother you've come back to me..." He was whimpering in his sleep, his face twisting into a defensive snarl, but when the tapping on his door increased to a determined bang, Clurie jumped and scrambled in his sheets, kicking himself off the bed with a backwards flail. His head hit the floor and he was awake, staring up at the ceiling as the knocking beat at the door like the way his heart beat at his chest.

There was perhaps a week of time that passed since his encounter with the Obscuvian, whose unforeseen attack left young Clurie at a terrible disadvantage to fight, and after that, missing two of his limbs. At first, it seemed like a ghastly crippling, until it was discovered that Clurie could pull himself back together, repair his limbs, and he spent those days past eating anything in sight, including his blankets which would burn with his prolonged touch, and recovering his energy and lost ash. He had been reformed completely for nearly two days now, but he had been weak and unwilling to leave the safety of his room. Chauhn spent his free time between his own chores and duties coming in to check on Clurie, heeding his demands and bringing in bundles of wood and stacks of paper for his consumption, replacing his blankets after he had eaten them. It helped Clurie immensely, but never did he say thank you to his Grimm. He couldn't even look at his face when Chauhn made the deliveries. He would either hide himself under the covers, or if he was feeling particularly daring, he would make Chauhn walk backwards into the room or tie a wide scarf about his head to conceal the mask that haunted Clurie in his dreams.

It was probably that bitter resentment that gave long enough pause to Clurie's acknowledgment of the beating door for him to notice the fact that his blankets weren't ready to eat. Usually they were blackened and stringy by now, shriveled and bursting into flakes, but they were untouched.

"Huh? What is it?" Clurie muttered distractedly, paying only the littlest attention to the door while he inspected the clean state of his blankets with alarm. He was still upside down, legs on the bed and in the air, while his tussled black mess of hair laid on the floor. He stretched and pulled the blankets between the covered shapes of his hands. "If that's you, Clemmings, I don't need anything. Can't you just leave me alone for one moment? I'm not a baby, and especially not your baby brother so stop...treating...me...like him..."

Clurie pulled out his fingers and stared. They were fingers.

"Your Grimm! Your Grimm is in trouble!"

Dumbness flooded into Clurie like ice water, freezing up everything inside of him so quickly and so completely that he felt the breath stolen away from his lungs. He had fingers. Not just any kind of fingers, not his kind of fingers, but actual fingers, fleshy and soft, his knuckles pink and his oval fingernails pinker. Round tipped fingers, with soft rosy pads, the reddest part of his hands, which were creased with gentle folds that stretched and doubled over when he flexed his fingers to make sure that they were still his. They responded. They were still his. Clurie's breath struggled to suck into the vacuum of his chest, and he stared in dawning horror at the softness of his arms, the thin hardly noticeable black hair on his olive forearms which were no longer pale or gray or cracked or dark and burning into the shape of twisted scratchy coal and ember. His body threw itself into a twist, further tangling himself in the grip of his blankets as he tried to wiggle out of them and onto his hands and knees, scratching his fingernails into his cheeks. His cheeks were also soft, hot, but warm in the way skin gets when filled with fear. There were no embers in his cheeks, no comforting glow or flare.

His panicked breathing soon compounded into a horrified wail, wrenching up clumsily from the ground, looking as if he was trying to run away from his own limbs, like they were the most terrifying things in the world, even more terrifying than Chauhn when he was angry with grief. "Oh no....Please no...! NO! WHAT IS THIS?!" he cried, digging his hands into his cheeks and then dragging them up into his clean, cold, and thick Imisese hair as black as pitch, not the feather soft and dark as coal. He looked down at his clothes, threads that were no longer as odd and distinguishing as his born Plague clothes, but clothes that were plain and too similar to the simple rags that Chauhn used to wear, and the fleshy legs that held him up from the wooden floorboards. Clurie screamed again, entirely encompassed in terror.

He was an incarnation of his nightmare.

"Your Grimm! He's ill, you must fetch him!" came the muffled voice on the other side of the door. Clurie nearly ignored it if it weren't for the fact that he was also thinking of Chauhn. Still pressing his new fingernails into his face, as if trying to dig through to get past the layer of flesh that obviously wasn't his to the face he knew beneath, Clurie wobbled to the door and collapsed against it, screaming in between the cracks of the door.

"I won't touch him! I won't have anything to do with him!" he said. He looked down at his hands, reacting again like he did when he first saw them. A jolt ran up through his spine and he pressed his hands into his eyes, dreading to imagine what color they would be now.

"We cannot! We dare not!" the voice of the servant replied.

"Then I won't either!"

"He's been struck by the plague!"

The diseased condemnation took a few moments to completely sink into Clurie's thick skull and through the cankered layers of addled panic and terror. He was seeing everything in flickering images, much like someone might see images in a fireplace, defined by the licks and shapes of flame. At first all he could see was his own hands, shaking and spread out in defense before the twisted and gnarled face of a grieving boy. Though, once he focused through his fingers, let them burn away, he could see beyond them towards that boy, see him clearly through flickers of flame. The anger in his face melted away into sad wails, screams of pain from within the bowels of his curdling stomach, focused around the button of the belly, the scar of a severed umbilical chord underneath the fold of his arms. The boy was weeping with all the strength he had, opening his glossy eyes to look up at the oppressing weight of the darkness beyond the hearth's fire, how it threatened to crush the fire that wasn't even able to lift away the shivers and shudders of cold. He was the same boy that had done so much for him before, traveled miles for him, worked himself to exhaustion, and put up with servitude, all with a humble upward turn of the lips. Why was he still cold when he was in the belly of the flame?

Clurie's heart, bruised from the abuse before, was still soft, but, being soft, it was easier to feel the pain of the bruise. He grit his teeth, fighting back the swell of worry that climbed up the rack of his spine, but no matter how he tried to twist the image of Chauhn back into that monster that so frightened him, he would snap back into the hunkered over ball of a boy, his nose between his knees as he sobbed, looking like Clurie must have looked when he was pushed into the hearth to burn. Rolling his eyes back into his head as he wasn't able to fight against the impulse that pressed him into opening the door, Clurie stepped into a weak run alongside the panting servant, ignoring the startled glances and reactions concerning his appearance while he focused on his still weak limbs to move. He had enough panic for himself to not care about the reactions of others.

What did get through to him though as he scampered out of the estate into the snowbound courtyard, tripping and kicking up drifts of snow, was the image seemingly pressed into the white, splatters of black in the shape of birds, and the haunting image of a small body shaking in the midst of them. Around in a standing circle, refusing to get any closer to the boy, were other servants and guards, who were setting up some kind of quarantine, glancing every so often to the coughing individual deep in the mess of fowl. They all looked up as Clurie came bounding forward, his black hair bouncing beneath the rim of his hat around eyes that they recognized were no longer black. Murmurs as soft as the falling snow about them started up, following Clurie as he dared to step into the ring of dead crows. He could feel the cold as strongly as he did before when he was just a Plague but this time, it did not hurt to touch it, trip in it, or kick it up to his calves as he frantically scrambled to Chauhn's side, a human boy and no longer a monster.

Chauhn, mostly unmoving against his broken shape of a fallen snow angel save for the jerks and kicks of his legs as he coughed up dark gunk to the corners of his mouth, did not immediately recognize the presence dropping to his side. His eyes were squinted shut, trying to see past the wetness of sickness, and his arms were still working against his side, struggling to lift himself up despite the heaviness in his head. Even when he was struck with the most morbid of illnesses, his neck a princely collar of buboes, he was still fighting to push himself up from the ground, probably to return to trying to pick up the dead crows in the snow like a good page. Clurie had to take a few moments to stare, his face riddled with knots of pain, panic, and pity.

Even if he hated Chauhn, he couldn't hate him for being ill. He especially couldn't hate him for still bullheadedly trying to pick himself up from the blankets of ice. Clurie leaned over him, gingerly digging his soft fleshy fingers into the cold crunch of snow underneath him, lifting him up clumsily until Clurie was able to lean him on his knee. What he could hate him for, though, was that look on his face when he was able to pry open his eyes and blink past the blare into his transformed face, the face of a Clemmings. It hurt them both.

"No...Oh no...Can it..." were his first whispers.

Chauhn's face was first struck with blatant shock and confusion, a slow thing to do since his face was frozen with cold and stiff with suffering, and then was subject to a quaking sorrow, its epicenter in his mouth, trembling until it reached the peaks of his brows. At first, a terrible whimper, until it pieced itself together into a pained chuckle, a blast of scratchy laughter that overtook his shoulders, relieved no matter the hurt in his body. He lifted his hand to Clurie's shoulder with a tense squeeze with his fingers, shaking him as if to assure himself that he was real, before his laughter increased tenfold, erupting into a bout of helpless sobs.

"It is you...Where have you been, huh?...Where have you been?" the Clemmings boy bayed at him, taking him instead by the back of the neck, keeping him in place even though the world was only spinning in his weary head, "Dammit, Clurie, we're supposed to stick together. Clemmings stay together, Clurie...We're brothers and we're supposed to stick together...We're family...That's what we do..."

It took everything in Clurie's power not to reach forward and dig his fingernails into Chauhn's eyes. Gritting his teeth so hard that he could feel the stress in his temple, pounding hard with the angry beat of his heart, the once-Quietus ripped his neck from Chauhn's grip and wrangled his body without so much care or gentility from the snow and awkwardly hoisted him onto his back, pulling his arms over his shoulders so that he could keep the semi-conscious boy on the platform of his wings. Stumbling forward onto his knees in the snow, Clurie pit his legs as strongly as he could, and unfolded his shaking knees until he was able to more or less wobble onto his feet.

Chauhn continued murmuring, dizzy and elated on his back, like a bag of potatoes than a living being. "Your eyes, Clurie...They're green like mine...You've got father's eyes. Mother's chin..."

"...Shut up, Clemmings," Clurie whispered, stabilizing himself enough so that he could swing his arms underneath Chauhn's knees one at a time, and hoist him up higher onto his back. He shuddered to feel Chauhn's head against his neck, nonetheless let him touch him at all in any capacity. This would be the first time that they had touched one another since Clurie was last gripped tight and small in Chauhn's hand, prepared to be thrown into the gut of the fire's hearth and to his supposed fiery death. Clurie lurched forward, weaker now with Chauhn's weight upon his back, but stronger still with his newly bubbling anger, every kind word from Chauhn earning another bundle of kindling to the fire.

Through the field of dead crows, the Clemmings boys trekked, and to the estate's entrance, where servants scattered like trash through the streets before them, dodging the plague ridden boy riding the back of his Plague. But in the corridors back to his room, Clurie couldn't help but notice as his footsteps grew heavier and heavier, stomping along, quicker, faster, angrier, companion again to the hatred that served as his defense. He imagined Chauhn's face underneath each of his steps, and then, eventually, he imagined his own face, boyish, without his ember cheeks, and with eyes as green as a Clemmings' broken beneath the slam of his sole.

He stepped into their room.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Cunning |[ . . . ..
April 1st, 1411

Quote:

Dr. Adlam's fiddled around with the Furvus Elixir some and he's come to a potential diposable and transportable threat for the Fellowship of Mages, something that has an innate ability to decapitate several mages at once. Thanks to some of the inner workings of the Fellowship of Mages and its lateral corruption, fully blooming with Lady Waldgrave's death, several of the cultists have managed to invade fortresses to try and sneak in this new poison to Fellowship fortresses. This is not only an immediate threat, but this poison will instantly burn and kill you. Obscuvans be weary when entering a Fellowship Base, and confer at the Annex if you so desire.
Fellowship, you must decide between one of two things-- use your wits and snuff out these Obscuvan spies or relocate yourself to one of the bigger Fellowship bases, the Northern Base or the Anican castles.

Clurie didn't sleep at all.

He stayed up all night, watching over Georgie and Chauhn who coughed and choked into each other's shoulders, too sick to move, none the less apologize to one another for coughing mucus onto their shared bed sheets. Clurie, with Adal's insisting, would lean forward and gingerly wipe their faces with a handkerchief he wasn't allowed to eat, dabbing the snot and drool from their mouths, careful not to agitate the boils growing on their necks. It made Clurie sick to look at them, so he tried his best to move quickly before scrambling away again to his corner of the room, perched up on chair that they dragged in from the hallway. No matter what he tried, covering his ears, humming to himself, losing himself in his own troubled thoughts, he couldn't ignore the terrible gut wrenching sound of Georgie and Chauhn fighting the Plague with every wet sniffle and groan. They were dying, of that Adal and he were convinced, and there was nothing they could do to help them.

In the morning, Clurie was sent out to retrieve more blankets while Adal stayed behind, carefully dribbling drops of water into the boys' cracked and chapped lips. He made his way to the storeroom closets where such items were held, his steps as sluggish and slow as the pained whirling of his mind. He couldn't help but think of the Plague that riddled the flesh of the boys back in the room. It was the first time that he had seen it in all its gruesome glory. In his young Phasmas days, Chauhn had taken great care to protect him from such sights, covering his eyes if they were near someone with the fatal disease, which would be a rare happenstance indeed thanks to Chauhn's dedication to staying as far away from the terrible pestilence in the first place. The only clues Clurie had to the disease that was his spawning, his reason for life in the twisted body he was now, were Chauhn's own frantic retelling of the decline of the Clemmings' family, of the first Clurie's ghastly death. To see it now, as Chauhn had seen it take over his family, one by one, was more than unsettling to Clurie.

It opened his eyes. It made him understand, just what it was, on a smaller scale, that Chauhn had gone through, boarded into his own home by fearful neighbors, and forced to be the witness to every one of his brothers and sisters' deaths, subjected to close quarters with the disease itself, a preliminary introduction to what it was that would soon spawn from the death of them all. Clurie didn't want to understand him, that was the last thing that he wanted to do for Chauhn, because he knew that his heart wasn't as steely or cold as he wanted it to be. His heart was warm, and given enough understanding of what decayed pile of corpses laid at the root of Chauhn's grief, he knew that even he wouldn't be able to keep his heart full of hatred. That hatred, though, was what kept Clurie's defense strong, and he worried far more for himself than his Grimm. He had to keep his hatred stoked, tend it, nurture it, because he still stubbornly studied revenge for his Grimm despite Adal and Georgie's efforts to convince him otherwise. He needed to keep his own wounds fresh, which otherwise would heal and do well...And if they healed, then how could he blame and resent Chauhn? What would be standing between them if not that? Nothing, and Clurie needed something to protect himself from that boy.

But...Chauhn was just a boy. Clurie summoned up again the image of Chauhn where he laid in bed beside Georgie, pale and sickly, an uncomfortable ashen gray with his neck rung about with blackening boils. Helpless and weakening by the moment...How could Clurie think that such a feeble boy could harm him? Clurie bit back the guilt seeping up in his gut, and he firmed his face, his thoughts reverting again to all the mopey, snot-ridden encounters he had with despicable Chauhn Clemmings, the grovelling and whimpering mess. He couldn't feel bad for a whiny brat like him, no, he only owed him the littlest of help.

But when Clurie heard tell of murder and death among the mages, his heart seized up with fear.

Weaving himself between the scramble and hustle of other servants rushing about and distributing blankets, washing them, and folding the recently dried, Clurie listened to the nervous squeak and quibble among them as he tried to surreptitiously gather his own armful of blankets to bring back to Chauhn and Georgie. He heard terrified accounts of death among the estate and elsewhere all over Shyregoad, mages found with twisted bodies, mouths agape, and sunken flesh burnt to crisps and cinders. Poison, was what they were harking, poison brought in by dark cloaked figures, direct attacks against the Fellowship itself. The cultists were trying to kill them all off.

It was also then that another servant, one of the older more respected women, beckoned their attention, announcing the relocating of mages everywhere across Shyregoad to safer provinces. Lord Yizhaq would be taking a caravan of mages and others who longed for more security and shelter to the castles of Anica, where the heart of the Fellowship now resided, a last stand of sorts, where Grimms and mages would protect each other to the utmost degree. They would be moving out soon, a day at most to get ready.

After bargaining for an armful of blankets, Clurie turned tail and started scampering as quickly as he could back through the hallways to their room, his mind spinning with fright for his Grimm and Georgie. They were defenseless now, with only Adal and he to stand between them and any sneaky bloodthirsty Obscuvian who might seek their death like they had sought out his own and Hayat's, not too long ago. What help were Adal and he now that they were bound in helpless human bodies, what could they do against a determined Obscuvian without their Plague-given strengths? None.

They had to get ready. They had to move to Anica, where perhaps they would have more safety for two human Plagues and two humans with Plague.

And as Clurie ran, he wondered just what it was that so quickly flipped his feelings of betrayal and hurt, anger and disgust, to mortal fear for his Grimm.

He didn't wonder long.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Open Your Eyes |[ . . . ..
| With New Life |
April 2nd, 1411

Odd and fragile, Clurie scrambles to get ready for the sudden move to Anica, a mess himself and hardly able to cope with the cold never mind the deteriorating shape of his Grimm and the collapsing world about him, when he runs into a thick and curvy woman who strikes him with cold familiarity, her eyes like that of a hawk.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Cunning Foxes |[ . . . ..
April 3rd, 1411

Along with the other Grimms of Yizhaq's estate, Clurie hauls Chauhn's weakening body to the widely open grasping arms of Anica, where the last stronghold of mages and Grimms is being held in Shyregoad.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Leaking Sunlight |[ . . . ..
April 4th, 1411

Quote:

There's been a mark of hallucinations across Panymium, and many have sent certain people into a certain daze. The earth is being marked by copious amounts of sand, a kind of thing that Panymium rarely sees outside of the scattered beach shores, and the people and objects around them seem to be melting and molting feathers. Not only this, but you see a bird's visage at the corner of your eye, a bird-headed man covered in feathers with a bare and tanned body standing aimlessly amidst the crowds, when you are alone, at any time-- but he does not speak to you. At some point in time this bird-headed man will tempt you to do something, a question that has lurked at the back of your mind, and that question will be the only thing he will say to you before he disappears, molting away until he's nothing but a scattered collection of dust.
What does he say, and what do you do in response?

Time in Anica's castles was spent with deliberate care by Clurie Clemmings, who still strode about in the guise of a boy's body, his hands soft and gifted with claws only as strong as he pretended his fingernails to be. And he had a lot of time to spend. There was little for him to do besides seek out means to help his Grimm and his friend, as mages in the castle grounds were too preoccupied and suspicious of offered help to give him the time of day as he adventured about in the new labyrinths and discovered the layout of Anica, running into dark figures he didn't pay attention to, too lost in his own worries and concerns. He wasn't able to venture out too often though, because Georgie and Chauhn, riddled with plague spots, both begged him to stay out of the way of the others in his new fragile state. When he had exhausted checking in on the other Grimms that had come from Yizhaq's estate, or looking for Sloane around the Anican grounds, who was perpetually busy or out of reach, Clurie spent his time straying about, neglecting his task of watching over the Malt and Clemming Grimms and unknowing of the feathered figure who watched him. He figured just dealing with his recollections of them, haggard and deathly ill, as pale as the sheets they were wrapped up within in their temporary room in the Fellowship's base, was enough for him to handle and he didn't need to be physically present there to suffer their plaintive moans of ache and hurt. He hated feeling torn between being useless or being concerned over Chauhn. Instead, he wandered outside the room, close enough to hear Adal should he call for him, but far enough away so that he could pretend he was somewhere else, far away from his suffering Grimm to stare at the copious amounts of sand that mysteriously shifted through the streets of Anica. He wasn't sure if he was feeling ill from his lack of sleep or if he was bloated with fear for the state of his Grimm, nearly a hair's breadth away from death.


Sleep was another thing that escaped Clurie, granting him more time than it was necessary to brood over Chauhn's illness. He couldn't convince himself to close his eyes, which were still an eerie green. Clurie had seen them, stared at them long and hard in puddles of melted snow, or in the reflections of his warped face in silverware which he used to force finely chopped strands of steamed vegetables and mushed up globs of Clurie knew not what down Chauhn's throat. He helped feed the two boys of whatever they could scrounge of soft enough texture around the kitchens, but it was always a battle to get him to do anything for Chauhn that would require his immediate interaction with him. When Adal's hazel eyes flashed with irritation, the spat would be over with and Clurie would capitulate to their demands, ruefully tending to the Clemmings boy who smiled ruefully back.


"So kind," Chauhn would comment happily after swallowing thin broth administered by Clurie himself, his words slurred together from weakness and his cheeks ruddy red with fever. "Clurie you were always the kinder...The gentler..."


"That's the fever talking," Clurie would say back tersely, stabbing the spoon into the bottom of the bowl as he fished out another mouthful of broth. He made sure to scrape the spoon against the bowl, making a terrible scratch sound to communicate the kind of frustration he was feeling when he dared not groan aloud. He figured the quicker he fed Chauhn, the quicker he could get him to shut up. "You know that I'm the crueler, the harsher, the bitter. The one who was kinder is dead. He died long ago, hardly taller than your elbow, shorter than your shoulder. You pushed him into the fire, still barely alive, to burn him before he killed you."


"No...You were still the kinder...Even after..." Chauhn would vainly try to reply, as stubborn as his fight with the pestilence. He would hardly be able to move, lest he break the buboes that swelled on his skin and neck, and Clurie was thankful for it, otherwise he might have tried to reach up and take his shoulder, offer him some brotherly gesture that would surely break his brittle defenses.


"No, Chauhn, Clurie's dead. I'm the monster that fed on his death and walks around in your brother's skin just to plague you," Clurie would say, his ire a fragile thing in his voice no matter the scowl he accompanied with those words, "You hate me. As you should."


"No...I...I already told the monster, the feather haired man...The man...I already told him..." Chauhn would insist after a painful swallow, "I already told him that...No matter what...I would still love you like a brother..."


"No, you don't. You're sick and you're stupid because of it. Just shut up and save us both your nightmares," Clurie hissed and he jammed another spoonful of soup into his Grimm's mouth, holding the spoon between his teeth until Chauhn choked and coughed. He would repeat these things with a mordant tone, a curt whisper just for the boy, and he would enjoy every pained frown or steeple in the brows that he would fester in Chauhn as he laid in his death bed. Testing that bruise on Chauhn was the only way that he could make sure he was still weak and unable to hurt him again. Though...When Clurie reminded Chauhn of his dark past, he felt more and more like he were just trying to remind himself that he was still a Plague and that, in a way, he was chasing away the smiles and kindness that he himself felt so hungry for. Deep within him was a little voice, the high-pitched and happy voice of little Phasmas Clurie, that begged and pleaded with him to return some of that kindness, or gather that friendliness and use it like kindling to warm his own cold heart. It was the same voice that suggested it was a good thing to look so similar to Chauhn's deceased brother, because that's all what Chauhn really wanted and if he could just be the brother now, attitude and all, then he could be held again, made warm again like he used to when he was no taller than a matchstick. Clurie smothered that voice with all the tons of ash left over from the tragic burning of the brotherhood between Chauhn and he. He tried his hardest not to listen to it. But it was hard to not be reminded, seeing his reflection in the tools that he would use to feed Chauhn and Georgie, and again haunted by looking into the face of Chauhn himself, who, to Clurie, was only a golden rendition of himself, a mirror image that he was afraid to look into. He was quickly forgetting that he was a Plague.


Of course, the unnatural change had only lasted a few days by the point that he began to seriously take into consideration the doubt that festered in him the moment he discovered the oval nails on his fingertips in place of his monstrous black claws. Those days though were new, every morning a frightful and unknowing one, where Clurie waited with tense anticipation to slowly transform back to his Plague self which so firmly pressed a wedge between him and Chauhn. It made every day feel like a year's worth of waiting, slow and hazardous, where Clurie was waiting for a reprieve that would never come, a guillotine's blade that would never fall or a drink of water that would never refresh, and when Clurie sat down to wonder about either outcome he couldn't decide which one would be worse. It was torture. Straggling through hallways and slouching in doorways which echoed and focused the sound of Chauhn's piteous coughs and haggard breathing, he began to forget his monstrous form which he so longed to return to. Instead, he thought of his dying Grimm.

It disturbed him to see that he would shake and hold his hands, wring them with worry and press them to his face, his thumbs pressed to downward curve of his mouth to stifle any sighs of woe. He frowned more, adjusted his hands, stiffened up, breathed, gave into another wobbly sigh, and pressed his palms into his eyes with defeat. He couldn't convince himself to be angry anymore.

Clurie Clemmings sank against the wall outside of the Grimm's room, crumpling into a ball with his cheeks between his knees and his hands folded over the back of his neck, trying to emulate the little body he used to be before his world turned inside out. He felt no smaller. Without his willingness, his shoulders began to shake and this time he could cry without burning himself with tears. Though, minus the steam in his eyes and his adversity to water, Clurie discovered that crying still hurt as much as it did when he was a Plague.

Then he noticed the feathers dropping about his toes.

Poorly stilfing his sobs, Clurie twisted his face into a growl, ready to look up at Adal, whoever it was, and tell them off, but when he cast his green eyes above, his hands slipping down the sides of his neck, he saw nothing but darkness and feathers. He tried to speak, but so entranced was he in the man buried underneath the feathers, a beak pressed down into his chest as his beady eyes connected with his human ones, that he could only shove himself back against the wall, his arms slammed to the stone on either side. His heart thudded into his throat, choking him silent, and his legs pushed vainly into the cobblestone eventually skewing him to the side so he could crawl, trip and scramble against the floor, but no matter how he tried to lift himself up into a run back to the protective sanctuary with the Malts, he couldn't pick himself up, slipping helplessly on sand-covered stone. Scraping his cheek against the floor as he slammed down once again into the cobblestone, Clurie threw his gaze behind him, looking for the feathered man, only to feel his encroaching and dark presence pressing against him from the front. He winced against the ground, pulling back into himself from his chaotic sprawl like a newly beaten servant to stare in baleful eyed terror at the monstrous figure before him.

The feathered man said nothing.

As tense minutes slugged along, Clurie felt the fire of fear in his chest catch, and he bared his human and much less intimidating teeth. "If you're here to hurt me, I'll have you know that you'll only get hurt in return, feather fodder," he warbled helplessly, his scratchy voice no more intimidating than a fireplace's hiss and pop. In return, the feathered figure shook his head slightly from side to side, his bead eyes flashing. Within a blink, he was hunched over and staring into Clurie's face, a mere hand's worth of inches away, moving closer as if to pull him into an embrace. He seemed so sad. So...Honest. Like he were someone Clurie hadn't seen in a long time. Clurie startled, swallowing a yelp as he threw himself back against the sand. "Mind yourself, you stupid bird! Watch it! Don't touch me, don't you even dare!" he barked, kicking his leg up at the man, but when his foot connected, he was shocked to find that the feather man had blinked out of existence again, instead stepping towards the room at the end of the hallway that was Chauhn's stuffy resting place.

Clurie's heart jumped.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Scrambling up from the ground and throwing himself into a wall as he lurched forward with a growl in his face and a curl in his fingers, Clurie raced for the feathered man with all the monstrosity of a Plague even if he weren't in the shape of one then. He was hardly able to kick his heels into the ground when the feathered man abruptly turned to face him, his beady eyes sharply focused on his little form, or was he always turned? Clurie clawed his fingers into the wall to keep himself from slamming into the man, wrenching himself to crash against it. Glaring at the man with steely green eyes, Clurie huffed, his brows dangerously narrowed.

It was then that the beaked man spoke.

It was hardly a sound at all by the way speech was usually made. It was a whisper, but an internal one, a thought that moved in time with the snap of his beak but thick enough to tickle Clurie's ears when it was said. What words were weaved by that weak whisper, though, were as sharp as a dozen iron white fire prods stabbed through into Clurie's gut, pushing his spine out of the skin on his back, looping his entrails free in braided knots and bows. Clurie buckled.

"Do you love him?" the feathered figure asked, "Do you love him?"

Clurie stared at him for more heartbeats than he could bear to count. He was terrified to imagine it, but it wasn't hard to think of the resemblance between he and Chauhn then, right at that moment, his almond green eyes bulging from beneath the messy tangled bridge between the bend of his brows, and his mouth open and trembling from the fearful chatter of his jaw, holding to the wall like he were to be dragged away by the deadly sea current should he let go. Had he a hearth of a heart, he would have screamed for pain for the dowsing effect those terrible words brought upon him. But his heart had a stubborn flame. Coughing back to life, Clurie's rage peaked again and he released a boyish scream, throwing himself from the wall to attack the man with both fists, who leaned down onto his knees as if to welcome him into a deadly embrace, but the moment he collided into the feathered man, his arms wrapping around him, he was gone. Clurie was standing amid a pile of sand, the downy black of feathers swirling about his feet, his shoulders jumping about his ears as he fought for breath through the tangle of his own feather black hair about his face. Eventually, his head slipped free and hung from his noose of a neck.

"...I...I don't know. No...I don't...I don't know..."

Clurie Clemmings pressed his palms into his eyes and slumped into the door frame, more of a Clemmings than he would realize. Behind him, Chauhn whispered in a feverish haze after the image of a feathered man who was leaning over his bed while he was still drowning in the plague's effects. He stared at the feathered man with a fire of determination in his eyes that even his ashen Plague would envy, echoing a testament opposite to Clurie's denial.

"...My family...He's...No matter...He's...He's still...He's still no matter what..."

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Your Thin Frame |[ . . . ..
April 5th, 1411

Quote:

The Black Death has been healed from you completely, and your body feels as if the entire experience has never happened, though the threat is seemingly lingering on-- the unmovable crows are still laying dead on the streets, now as hardened as rock and smelling of an even viler decay. Every Grimm has also been sent a letter, parallel to the one given to you at the start of all of this, wrapped now in red ribbon and delivered by a dove, glowing with white. The crinkled piece of parchment whispers to you, "You have a choice."
The dove flutters its wings and is seemingly choking, then in front of you is something reasonably strange, bundles of extremely heavy feathers tied around with crude string. It whispers onward, "To make a Plague human or to taunt the Grimms further of the Black Death, grind these feathers to dust and feed it to the object of your attention."
You've been given a choice-- not your Plague, nor your benefactor, no, simply you-- you can either use this strange gift to malevolently harm a Grimm and further their Black Death infestation or, on the other hand, you can use it to keep your Plague as a human for longer.
Just before the dove flutters away from your sight, it whispers, "Now you know how wretched it feels, to be human and feel human sickness. Pray, will you play God with me?"

A morning was never as bright as the morning that Chauhn could finally peel his crusty eyes open and see without the haze of sickness choking up his sight. For a good week the Clemmings boy was sick, trapped in bed beside Georgie who shared his plague, and he had all but resigned himself to the shadow of death. Irony was all he thought about, his morbid mind laughing weakly at the fact that the plague had finally and once and for all caught up to him: the Last of the Clemmings, finally taken down by the same black disease that stole away every member of his dear family. Every day was spent thinking on a different sibling. First he thought of his eldest brother, the strong and proud Bradley Clemmings, hard worker and first to catch the disease that would kill them all. Then he thought of his precious sister twins, each with their own day, and how they refused to leave each other even when one had signs of the disease and the other didn't. He thought of Michi, the oldest of the bunch with the dirty blond Mishkan hair of their father, the same hair of himself, and he thought of little Clurie on the fifth day. All that day he had to keep himself from weeping, for the sake of keeping the peace in the silent tomb that was becoming more and more his tomb than his resting place, for Georgie's sake and his own. He knew that if he started weeping then he wouldn't be able to stop, and what energy he spent grieving would be the same energy he clung to keep him from away from death. The last day he spent thinking of his eldest sister, the one who staved off the illness for as long as possible, the one who pressured Chauhn to fleeing, the one who made him promise to stay together, the Clemmings always stayed together. Chauhn's heart ached to think of her. Lynn was the one to make him promise to take care of his brother's ashes, symbol for the Clemmings family as a whole.

He had betrayed her. That was the thought he played over and over again in his head when he felt his body too weak to even speak, too racked with pain and puss to do more than grow dizzy with his irregular breathing. Deepest into the black darkness on that day, he reeled from the haunting memories of his promise to her and the way he mutilated, murdered, and mangled that most precious of swears. It was also, a mere hair's breadth away from the dark clutches of oblivion, that Chauhn somberly promised to do anything and everything within his power to rectify what he had done. He had already made such declarations of change before, to himself and in whispers, but he hadn't yet accepted it with the severity of a mortal heart. He missed his family terribly, so badly, but they were gone. He realized that now with painful understanding, again and again, like echoes ringing between the swollen and cracked tunnels of his beating self. He would do anything to get them back...But there wasn't anything in the world to revive the dead.

He resigned himself to joining them.

Or at least, that's what it felt like in the few blinding moments of utter suffocation that hit him in the wee hours of the night after Clurie had doused the light. Drowning in the plague itself, Chauhn became too overwhelmed with pain to do much else than choke on his own spit while, on his neck and scattered across his body in a mismatched map, black boils and scars broke and bled, a fester of human rot. His head felt like it collapsed in on itself, folded across into bright white creases of pain, so intense that Chauhn was convinced that his own tears were the melting fluids of his eyes, popped and dripping out from his sockets. He lost feeling in his limbs, lost control of his breathing, and eventually lost sight of the living world.

Chauhn died.

Bright morning, he sucked in a desperate drowning breath. Peeling himself from the sheets with no help but the help of his own elbows, Chauhn willed his rigid form to bend and flex itself out of the bed. He was alone in his room that day. He had been lying with Georgie until he had miraculously healed from the black death a day or so earlier, and now he was about and slowly making his way along with Adal, wrapped up in their own unspoken chores and tasks. Clurie, like usual, had found every excuse to drift away from his side and was no where in sight, leaving no hint as to where he might have wandered off to. There was just Chauhn, newly woken as if he had merely been asleep for too long. He spent longer than he meant just testing out his reflexes, rediscovering his body and its functionality, breathing in for the first time with lungs that weren't clouded with muck, blood, and pus. There was a lightness in his movements, a fragility, and he couldn't help but let the edges of his smile perk up with gracious wonder. Such newness oiled his joints that Chauhn was sure that he had never once felt as good as he did then. As soon as he worked out the stiffness in his legs, he stood up tall on both legs and reveled in the feeling of his bare feet pressed against the stone floor, excited by the chilly sting. Catching his eye with a strand of pale light, Chauhn turned towards the door leading outside of the room and ventured forth, urged on by the forward tilt in his stance and the lightness of his steps. By the time he reached the door, he had to throw his arms out to catch himself against the wall because he had fallen into a bouncing jog. Fumbling with the door latch, he wedged it open and pressed his thin frame through and into the pallid light of the Shyregoadian day spilling in through the windows of the hallway of the Anican castle. He blinked, rubbed his eyes free of the moistness that gathered there, and stumbled deeper down the hallway, drifting along the arcade of pillars towards the patio that he eventually hoped to find. He didn't care for the fact that he was still in his sleeping clothes, his hair pulled into a stubby pony tail at the back of his head to keep his hair out of his face when he would bend over to retch, and his clothes stained with the blood and puss of the disease, the only remnants of a nightmare that seemed to have never happened.

He was alive again. Reborn. Rather like his brother's ashes, reborn into a Plague, he was reborn as well, having died from the plague, and, this fine albino day, he was back.

The arced doorways further down the hallway were the portals of Chauhn's passage. He strode boldly underneath them, pressing them open to greet a blast of spring chilled air, and when he breathed in he smiled. He could taste the very crispness of the air, bite it, chew it. Drifting along the half-circle space, several stories lifted up from the castle grounds, Chauhn ran his fingers across the rough stone banister, admiring the texture and he looked outward towards the unfamiliar terrain of Anica, struggling against the white to burst into spasms of green. His bright green eyes focused on the echo of green in the distance, and followed it through the city of Anica, to where it fought to prevail in the winter bound city. He took a deep inhale, and then he smelled it. The stench of death. Chauhn wrinkled his nose, his eyes stinging with the smell that he was slowly beginning to recognize, and when he looked about, leaning over the banister to peer at the town below, he noticed the tell tale spattering of black dots throughout the city, the bodies of distended and dead crows, still unmovable by the townsfolk and mages. Chauhn's stomach clenched, remembering the garish task that gave him the guillotine blow of Plague, and he felt his stomach whimper in memory, left to die in a field of white and peppered black.

With his dampening gold bangs whipping about his face, he began to lean back up from the stone rail when something light landed upon his back. Startled, Chauhn slipped and jerked himself free from the sound of flapping, throwing his arms about his head to bat at the sound that flapped about his ears and bursting with a sound of surprise. He managed to look out from underneath the protective throw of his arms, his side pressed to the banister, when he saw the winged messenger. Swinging over his head was the form of the glowing white dove, barely discernible from the white clouds overhead until it landed on the gray stone before him, its head cocked and peering at him with dubious judgment. Chauhn took a few moments to catch hold of his breath, and a few moments more to let his mind whirl frantically against his skull, before he straightened up, layering his spine straight and his face firm. Once before had he been accosted by such a messenger, a different one, robed in black, not white, and what rushed in after the dark message brought nothing but ill tidings. Chauhn let his face sour at the sight of the dove messenger and the delicate wrap of parchment clutched within its talons, suspicious of the message tied up with a strand of ribbon as red as the blood still stained on his shirt front.

"Harbinger," Chauhn said softly, his voice clear and strong as his newly developed diction, "You aren't wanted here."

The dove, in response, politely gutted the intestine-esque ribbon from about the message with the furious stab of its beak. As soon as the paper cracked open, like a pair of dead lips, Chauhn heard a fragile voice alight upon his ear. "You have a choice," it said, in tandem with the dove as it clenched its wings tight and began to wretch. The Clemmings boy watched with disgust as the dove displaced the contents of its guts, a densely wrapped pellet of feathers, onto the belly of the letter. Along with the drop of the feathers, Chauhn's stomach dropped as well, suddenly heavy with suspense. The next words the nothingness spoke were translated by Chauhn's understanding into precise and sharp jabs of pain, a poisonous weave of words. "To make a Plague human or to taunt the Grimms further of the Black Death, grind these feathers to dust and feed it to the object of your attention."

A familiar pang stabbed itself through Chauhn's chest, along with a slow realization. He stared at the feathers beneath the faintly fluttering chest of the dove, overshadowed by the spread of the white messenger's wings. Chauhn couldn't shift his gaze away from the suddenly dangerous knot of innocuous feathers as the dove lifted up with the furious whip of its wings and melted into the bright white of the low hanging clouds, its voice still ringing in his ears, his body and mind struck dumb by the power of the choice he was given.

"Now you know how wretched it feels, to be human and feel human sickness. Pray, will you play God with me?"

* * *

Elsewhere on the Anican grounds, Clurie Clemmings wrenched himself through a tall barrel vaulted hallway, a mop dragging in one hand and half filled bucket of water in the other. His thin leather soled shoes were slipping precariously against the marble floors, his wobbling steps prompting his bucket to swish and spill about his ankles. It was so easy just to lose himself to the chore of mopping the Anican marble, ordered to do as such by the higher ups in the castle, but it was easier to notice the unsettled feeling in his stomach as he worked, a heavy weight in his head that made everything else in his body feel light and delicate, as loose as the water splashing from the bucket. Gritting his teeth hard, Clurie stumbled along, trying to move and distract himself from the growing feeling. It was relentless. Dropping the bucket and the mop and not caring for the water that spread about his feet, Clurie dug his fingers into his arms. It felt like the very sand that whipped about the streets of Anica had somehow gotten underneath his skin and with each passing second he was more and more desperate to dig it out. He could feel skin gather up underneath his fingernails as he scratched his forearms, and for some reason, his eyes also began to fail, his vision falling into blurriness about the edges. Clurie began to whimper, sounds of frustration biting through the clench of his teeth as he raked his hands into his skin. It was to his surprise that the the bright red scratches he had burned into his arm were actually beginning to burn.

With his failing sight flickering behind the panicked blink of his eyes, Clurie watched in wonder and disgust as his flesh began to curdle, boiling up the length of his arm and peeling back into ashy grey and black. Coughs of firelight spluttered upon his limbs and calves, lighting up the contours of his frame in that shadows of the hallway, and lighting up the look of pure agony on his face. He was still somewhat human, and it was that dying humanity that suffered a hell's worth of searing pain. Clurie threw back his head and shrieked, his steps buckling underneath him as he fought to keep himself somewhat upright as he stumbled from the pain, splashing in the water beneath him, that, at first was a fantastic feeling of relief, and then, more and more, a perfect tool of pain. With steam licking up from underneath him, Clurie threw himself forward and tumbled head over heels onto the ground, striving with madness to crawl away from the water, his fingers twisting into the withered shape of digits burned nearly to the bone, his sinew sparking into flame and then black. The heat rose up to his face, burning his cheeks so that his eyes watered and dried, and he was sure that he was going to be burned alive. He screamed with all his strength, which was quickly fading, and louder still he tried as his sight deflated in on itself into blackness.

But it was a comforting blackness. The blackness that his eyes should be. Clurie lay panting on the floor, a tremble like a charred up piece of wood ready to fall apart, and when he opened his eyes, they were no longer green but blacker than pitch. He gingerly rolled onto his back and he stared up at the ceiling, gathering his bearings, before the confusion that was festering in his rattling skull bloomed into a single revelation. Jerking up into a sit, Clurie threw his hands into his face for his inspection, staring with wonder at the charred and eaten away remains of his hands, ashen claws that flexed and shifted with his will. Over and over again he moved them, spreading his fingers, clenching them into fists, and with every smooth movement, Clurie gave a giggle. Exhilarated couldn't even begin to describe the tumultuous feelings welling up in him then, but laugh he did. Great loud laughs, raspy from burnt up lungs, exploded from Clurie's gut in a crescendo of glee, until he was clapping his hands above his head and wrapping them about himself, giving himself hugs of celebration. Running his fingers along his cracked cheeks, burning with ember, Clurie allowed a couple tears to drip loose and he was all the more thrilled when they hurt.

"Oh...Brilliant, brilliant! I'm burnt to cinders again!" he shouted, near crazed with joy, and he wrenched himself up from the ground, twisting himself around into a run away from the half-mopped hallway, a trail of ash in his wake as he ran his claws through his dark hair, bellowing with rapture. "A Plague, again, Clemmings, a Plague! Never your brother, but a Plague!"

He had to find the Clemmings boy, he had to find him as quickly as possible! Better than no longer being a human, weak, fleshy, and heavy, better than being a Plague again, and even better than the reassurance that he was not Clemmings blood, would be the look on Chauhn's face when he sees Clurie's transformation. Oh, the disappointment! Clurie could feast alone on the face that Chauhn would make, and he needed fulfillment. He was hungry, so hungry now that he was a Plague again, and he was sure he would be satisfied if he could but stare at Chauhn as his face sank into despair. That was worth all the suffering and humility! He had to find him immediately.

The echoes of his laughter chased him down the hallway.

* * *

Should he use it...he could have his mirage of a brother for a bit longer. But...Should he now use it, which Grimm would he condemn to further torment?

Chauhn sat against the balcony wall, his brows tightly pressed in thought as he stared at the feathers and red ribbon in the cradle of his palms. For a good half hour he had sat in utter silence, hardly moving as he weighed either choice that had been given him, and then even those made up options he could hypothetically take. He could ignore the feathers, use them later, but then again, he didn't wish any harm on any Grimm, and he didn't need sneaky ways to poison a Cultist when he could just send a tree's girth through his gut. Perhaps he could leave them, or toss them into the wind. But...The responsibility was his. Wherever the feathers fell, it wouldn't change the fact that the were his responsibility now, and he couldn't bear to think of what might happen should someone else discover them or unknowingly use them for evil. He would have that guilt bearing on his soul along with the colossal tumor that was his guilt for Clurie. His heart didn't need any more bruises. As far as he could figure, the best thing to do would be to choose the lesser of two evils...But what was less evil than the other? Further trapping Clurie in the body of his human counterpart, or letting another Grimm suffer for days longer with that terrible Plague? Hell was unable to encompass the kind of physical pain that was bashed into every inch of body by the Plague and Chauhn certainly did not wish for anyone to suffer such mortal illness again, that would be a torture worse than death. But...Worse still would be to spurn Clurie ever further away from him, by forcing him to stay in that body. He didn't know what it was like for Clurie who was naturally anything but human to be stuck in a mortal body, but judging by the way he dragged himself through every chore and stared at himself in reflective surfaces...he was in as much pain as the Plague ridden, and he was awake to feel it all. The Clemmings boy wished that he could help him, heal him, change him back, even though it made his heart happy to see Clurie looking like the Clurie he remembered, but he would die before he chose his own Plague's suffering. He owed it to him still. He made a promise, swore on it, multiple times, every day, crossing his heart with duty, that he would protect and honor Clurie.

And protect him he will.

Chauhn crushed the feathers in his grip, bearing his teeth with the strength of sudden resolve, having followed out every possibility he could think of to what he hoped was the lesser of all evils. Without a second's thought save for the hope that he could be saving innocents from the feather's torture, but more importantly, saving Clurie from being trapped even longer in his human form, Chauhn began to feed himself the feathery bundle, one plume at a time. Grinding the feathers between his teeth, and wincing at the chalky taste it made, he waited until he had made a fine paste with his teeth until he swallowed, but even before the mortal syrup slunk down his throat he felt the effects slowly start to take hold. A fever was boiling up in his head, and he was familiar enough with the disease to guess how much longer he would have to wait before he was completely immobilized by the disease. He was in luck that he was in the castle still, granted a room to pass the effect of the Plague, and he was surrounded with other mages that wouldn't fear him for the Plague, knowing full well his situation and status. He wouldn't be thrown into the ditches or left for dead. Just a few more days of suffering in payment for Clurie's safety and eventual return to his true form. Chauhn took another pinch of feathers and stuffed them into his mouth, feeling his cheeks hot with the rising illness and feeling his neck stiffen with a ring of blackness. It wouldn't be much longer before he was under again, and he still had as many feathers as he had fingers on one hand to ingest.

"Clemmings!"

Chauhn looked up past the thin veil of water that had built up in his eyes, his face stiffening with determination as he solemnly worked his jaw. He watched with quiet apprehension as a familiar monstrous boy bounded through the hall, failing to glance through the windows to the balcony until he had nearly passed them by.

He was shouting, his face the very picture of joy and Chauhn couldn't help but feel a spark of happiness for him. "Clemmings, look at me! Look, I'm..."

Those black eyes which so clearly delineated Clurie from the brother he once knew, focused on him with all the sharpness and focus of a hawk, a strength of glance which Chauhn easily mirrored back. He watched with a growing smile as Clurie scrambled through the doorway for him, his ashen face devolving, rotting almost, from utter glee to stunned horror and then panic. Chauhn stuffed another feather into his mouth and chewed.

"What are you...?" Clurie yelped, his emotional high crashing into a wall of confusion as he jogged to him, taking a moment to stand at the end of his feet, his hair and claws peeling and blackening still with as, "Clemmings...What is that...What are you eating...?" Chauhn didn't reply. Clurie stared. His face was so twisted, struggling with every ounce of his energy, which was at that moment, at the highest its ever been, to understand just what it was that Chauhn was doing, but when he saw the blood red ribbon, and the worsening state of Chauhn's health, visibly apparent by the struggle of his breathing and the darkening hues of his fingers, his gut collapsed with realization.

"...CHAUHN!" screamed Clurie, overwhelmed with a sudden and inexplicable panic. He dropped into a crouch beside Chauhn, catching his arm as he struggled to stuff the last of the feathers into his mouth. The Clemmings boy opened his mouth into a cry of pain, wrestling with Clurie to try and wrench his wrist out of his burning grip, but between the two, he was the weaker and growing more and more so with every second. Strength of resolve though was Chauhn's, and he pulled up his knees to try and wedge them between him and his plague, but Clurie countered it with the wedge of his chest, moving in so that Chauhn's arms had no where to stretch or push, folded up against his chest.

"Stop eating them! Stop! What are you doing to yourself?!" Clurie cried, spitting into Chauhn's face with every blast of words. He dug his sharp fingers into Chauhn's wrist, struggling to rip his tightly clenched palms open, but the boy's fingers were folded fast. "Stop it, Chauhn! Open your hand!"

"It was either this or your suffering! Clurie, I made a promise to you, and this time I intend to keep it!" Chauhn roared back, his voice failing with each word, softening with the growth of the disease. "I'm doing this for you!" But the strength of the scream fell short as it was choked up with coughs and shudders of breath, his body folding in on itself with a worsening pain. Clurie clawed frantically at Chauhn's hand, digging his fingers into his palm as he fought to open Chauhn's grip, but with the coughing it had only tightened. Clurie waited, impatient and gritting his teeth hard, for when Chauhn had to breathe in, and when he inhaled, his grip loosened for the few precious seconds Clurie needed to hold his arm stiff with one hand and pry open the other fingers, but already Chauhn was fighting back. Clurie may have been stronger of the two Clemmings when Chauhn was incapacitated with illness, but he was only just recently transformed back to his rightful shape. He was incredibly weak and needed ash, needed sustenance. Without thinking, his mind already clouded with panic, hunger, and confused rage, Clurie snapped his neck forward and took the feathers from Chauhn's hand with his own teeth, thinking that he would destroy the feathers with his hot breath and ember. His cheeks flared, igniting with flame from the little fodder he managed to mouth out of Chauhn's hand, and when he was sure there wasn't anything left for Chauhn to poison himself with, he threw Chauhn's arms away from him and pushed himself away.

"Dammit, Clemmings!" The Ash Plague spat, shivering with overexertion from where he stared at Chauhn hard, breathing quickly while he licked his lips of feather ashes. He ran his forearm across his face, maneuvering himself into a crouch, "What did you think you'd accomplish by doing this to yourself? How do you think that would help me? I want you to stop being so damn stupid all the time! I want you to..." Then Clurie stopped. What did he want from Chauhn?

The Plague stared at Chauhn as the boy sank on the wall, his neck tucking into his chest as he labored to breathe. That morning Clurie had left Chauhn sleeping peacefully like he had never been touched by the Plague, and he was actually dimly relieved that the pestilence had finally left him. Not only for Clurie's sake, since he was tired of taking care of him, but for Chauhn's sake too...Now he looked like he was a few moments away from death again, deathly pale, sunken flesh, and blackened finger tips and neck, his face practically melting with fever. When he turned the corner of the hallway, when he realized that Chauhn was again falling ill, Clurie felt his stomach do a flip. He feared something. But what was it that he was afraid of? Losing Chauhn? Clurie should've delighted to see that Chauhn was ill again, should've stood back and watched and laughed that the Clemmings boy would do something so stupid for himself while he walked idly by on the gnarled and blackened feet of a Plague. Why did he leap instead of laugh?

The feeling of confusion and concern in Clurie's stomach became bloated then, and with a grunt of anguish, he curled up on himself, like he were readying himself to retch. A flash of heat rolled over his body, pressing the air out of him so he couldn't scream, and the itchy agony of frying skin fizzled all over his body. When he opened his eyes again, staring down at his hands as he convinced himself that he wasn't going to throw up, he noticed something deathly terrifying.

His hands were fleshy again.

Clurie's shoulders began to shake, his head hanging in defeat between them. Within moments of his wobbling breathing, he was weeping again and he uttered a long and raw moan when he did not feel them sizzle against his cheeks. He was sure he knew what color his eyes were now. Snapping his head to Chauhn, the once-Plague, once-boy, now boy again bared the worst of stares at Chauhn, a stare full of bitter hatred and loathing as his cheeks lit up with blood and not flame.

"WHAT. HAVE. YOU. DONE?!" he howled, curling his fingers into the claws that they ought to be as fitful globs of tears ran down his cheeks. Clurie scrambled forward, absolutely livid. Taking Chauhn by the wrenching of his collar and balling of his fists, he rattled the boy, not caring for the dull thumps as Chauhn's head was bashed against the wall behind them. "VILE! VILE WRETCHED THING, YOU! ...YOU! HALF-HEARTED CUR! YOU IMBECILE! YOU'RE AN IDIOT CHAUHN CLEMMINGS, YOU'RE A GOOD FOR NOTHING IDIOT!"

Chauhn, unable to do much else that blubber in his grip with coughs and chokes of mucus, stared up at him with fear, though, when Clurie took the time to bore his dagger-filled gaze into their matching sets of eyes, Clurie noticed that the fear wasn't for Chauhn's own self, but for him. Clurie froze up, his grip still balled up underneath Chauhn's chin.

"WHAT?!" Clurie screamed at him.

"...why..." Chauhn mumbled at him, and Clurie stared, blinking hot tears from his human eyes. Chauhn sniveled loudly and lifted his hand to Clurie's shoulder, squeezing it tightly. "...I was doing this to save you from this...why did you do this to yourself...? This is...what I feared...Clurie...This body isn't you."

Gears fell into place. They turned, shuddered against each other, and rolled. Clurie stared at Chauhn for a good five minutes, his green eyes the only parts of him expressing the shock which stormed through him before he twitched back to life. Moving as slow as Chauhn's realization that something between them had finally been bridged, he unclenched his fists from about Chauhn's collar, and slowly, carefully, pushed his arms around him. Chauhn's face was pressed gently to Clurie's shoulder. With his arms limp in his lap, he held still as Clurie wrapped him up in his arms and rocked back and forth, his shoulders shaking still, before he began to weep aloud and scream, digging his fingers into Chauhn's back, a sound and fury of one distraught boy and the deafening silence of an other.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| A Finer Ash |[ . . . ..
April 10th, 1411

Quote:

There are some remnants left of the cultists' presence in several of the Shyregoedian firms, but for now the cultists have left you be, and for some strange reason the crows manifested around major Mage areas have dissipated nearly entirely. That said, however, many of the Mages are now left Plagued or dead, dropping like flies, and what few of you are left healthy and standing have the job of disposing of the cultist remains-- the leftover crows, the Furvus Elixirs, the Plagued mages, the dead cultists, everything, despite your rank in the Fellowship or in the commonwealth. It's a lot of errands to go through to dispose of such things but, when you do have to, how do you fare and what do you make of it all?

Dealing with regret over their last encounter, Clurie and Chauhn set to work on helping clean up the grounds of Anica when they are encountered by Hayat who brings them an important message.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Leaves of the Clover |[ . . . ..
April 12th, 1411

Quote:

Things seem to have calmed down unfathomably well since the beginning of this fifth week. For those of you who used the feathers, the effects have finally worn off and you're free once again of the Black Death or, to those few unfortunate Plague souls, are relieved of the shackles of a human's image. To those who didn't use those feathers given to you by the dove, however, it seems that those feathers are here to stay with you as a haunting memorandum.
But, of course, there is consequence to playing God.
After the phenomena with heavy-as-lead crows dying on the streets and your run-in with death, it seems that you're attracting nothing but it for the next few days. People around you will die, and there is no way you will help it. You'll smell the Black Death, you'll smell Death linger around you and you'll have the scent of a Plague through and through for the next few days, as if your disease has transferred from your physical body to your six senses. There is something in the back of your mind that is telling you that, yes, nearly instantly, anyone around you that isn't a Grimm or a Plague will be inflicted with the Black Death as soon as they move away from you. To the Plagues, however, all is normal.

. Chauhn was no stranger to ill tides, he could stay afloat quite well in them, but that didn't mean that there were some times when he tired and was dragged underneath by the current. He was still suffering from his most recent run-in with Clurie, which left him wading through a marsh of mixed emotions, when he was accosted by Yizhaq's servant in her last hours of human shape. The Clemmings had been discharged of Yizhaq's service and the reasoning still fluttered about Chauhn's head in haze, unable to grasp at it and unable to understand. But he was determined to do as he was told by his superiors, and Hayat was a direct messenger. He couldn't challenge her. He didn't even have a chance to say good bye to his lord before he was again off in his carriage destined to return to his family in his home estate. Chauhn, in the meanwhile, stayed idly by in the grounds of the Anican castle, gingerly shaking off what remains of the plague he could. It had been a couple days since he had brought himself down again with the illness, a couple days since Clurie had accidentally sentenced himself to prolonged torture in his hated human shape, and they were able to survive until the effects began wearing off again, thought it was swith very little interaction with the other. Forced into aiding one another, Clurie would bite his lip whenever he was about Chauhn or even when others were talking about him. He instead focused on remaining quiet, sullen and bitter, and staring at the flex of his own fingers. Chauhn remained much the same, too cautious with his own words to bring himself to speak one to Clurie should he upset the other again. Besides, he had much more pressing things to concern himself with, than trying to spark up unwanted conversation with his Plague.

People were dying. Dying all around him it felt like. Chauhn again married himself to the minor work he could find around the Anican castle, putting himself into service after talking with the other servants and mages of the grounds. He felt like an urchin again, cast off from his role as page, and pushed into the role of scavenging and scrounging for work, though this time without the pay of silver or copper, but the pay of having his mind distracted. It was hard, though, to distract himself from the mortal effects of the plague, the way it raided through his own body, and still rioted through Clurie's, leaving the Plague in a slow and hurtful transformation back to his rightful shape, when it still seemed to be all about him. He and Clurie were restored, but for the rest of the Shyregoadian populace, it was still running rampant.

It seemed like every time he turned a corner in the castle grounds, he would be met with death. There was always some poor soul pitched against the ground, heaving as the plague worked it's torture, or some servant Chauhn had been talking to earlier, or some mage that he had previously nodded a greeting. He even stopped to help them, drag them out of the way, carry them to their rooms on his back, or run, looking for help, but his noble efforts were useless. They died hours later. The hallways were growing more and more empty day by day, and Chauhn couldn't help but wonder if he were the one spreading it, somehow blessed with the unhelpful side effects of a Plague. It was entirely possible, he thought, he had been struck with the pestilence twice, it wouldn't be that far fetched for him to still retain some blasted black mark upon him that spread to others with his mere interaction with them. Eventually, he stopped entertaining himself with chores and instead worked on keeping himself as far separate from other human interaction, save for speaking with Georgie or Adal, though in time, Chauhn began to worry that he might effect them too. Chauhn grew stiffer, quieter, and eventually he seemed dead again, still haunted with the ghost of the Plague. But it was a conscious effort that he employed, because his heart was too great, and he felt like if he were to let himself feel for every death that he encountered, he would burst again. He feared for Clurie. He feared for doing again some kind of harm, like the most recent of harms he did to him by accident. So, Chauhn turned himself inward, and started to slow and painful process of wiping his emotional slate clean.

Clurie noticed this almost immediately. He may have striven to remain our of Chauhn's way, but he was all the more acutely aware of Chauhn's personality. He had to keep a close eye, watch and study from afar for his own sake. It was like watching a fuse burn and not knowing whether or not the explosive it was attached to was alive or not, but Clurie paid close attention anyways, his chest tightened up with suspense and apprehension. He had been plotting to cause mischief and chaos for Chauhn in revenge of his accidental transformation back to humanity, something involving syrup and goose feathers, but, at the rate that Chauhn was sectioning himself off from society, Clurie only had to sit by and watch as he destroyed himself. It didn't make him feel well. In fact, it didn't make Clurie feel right. He felt like something was terribly wrong.

After a few days of Chauhn's increasing solitude to the point where it was hard for even Clurie to discover where he'd started running off to, he decided that he had enough. His studious watch of his Grimm had led him to a shaky conclusion, but he felt confident in his next choice of action. It was going to hurt Chauhn, he knew, and he was alright with it as long as he could fix what he felt was out of place with his Grimm. Clurie flexed his ashen claws, finally returned to him after a few days of suffering, and he stalked after his Grimm, his brows narrowed down into a fallen steeple.

Little searching did it take for Clurie to discover the place that Chauhn had hid himself away in, and he stood in front of the side wing's chimney with his hands on his hips and his mouth screwed into a tight frown. Since Chauhn's murderous outburst a near month ago, Clurie had turned away from fireplaces with a cold terror, but now, found himself face to face again with the cradle of his death and rebirth. It looked like the maw of a terrible red monster, it's iron teeth black and ready to pierce Clurie should he throw himself between the jowls. How could he had thought before that such a terrible place could be a place of comfort? Clurie forgot. But he had to brave the brick monster if he were going to get to Chauhn. Sucking in a breath to steady his nerves, Clurie stepped forward and ducked into the hearth, his steps carefully placed and ginger. Digging his claws into the brick structure of the monster's throat, Clurie yanked himself up with more ease than he thought possible. All he had to do was stretch and contract his arms within a reasonable reach, and elevate himself up the shaft instead of the slow wiggle and press that he was sure Chauhn had to employ to drag himself up to the chimney's spout. Inhaling brought Clurie instant gratification, for the smell and cloud of ash that was shifted free in his struggle did nothing more than sate his perpetual hunger. It gave him more energy to more quickly climb the bricks. In moments, he skulked free from the chimney's spout, blinking his black eyes as his cheeks puffed from the effort.

All around him was the sprawling lands of Shyregoad, ripples of winter green unearthed from the winter snow by the sweep of spring. It was still a sullen picture, but it was the most green Clurie had seen in his life as a Quietus. Hopping free from chimney's girth, he stepped gingerly on the rooftop, his black eyes swinging about for a familiar set of footprints. They were easy to spot against the roof, a set of carefully placed soot steps, and Clurie only had to follow them along the spine of the roof before he discovered a small and crouched over body, huddled next to the ledge of one of the castle's many buttresses. Chauhn was wrapped up upon himself, sullenly staring out at the eastern horizon, where, far in the distance, the lands of Imisus groaned from their events past.

"Clemmings," said Clurie, stepping closer with an air of irritation, "What are you doing out here? Some stray wind is going to blow your scrawny self off your perch and then where does that leave me, huh? Picking up your broken spine, that's what. Why are up here?"

Clurie expected to see Chauhn startle and stammer in reply, shrug his shoulders and hiccup as he made his sad explanation, but he did nothing of the sort. Instead, Chauhn slowly glanced at Clurie as he tiptoed near, and then looked back to the east with nothing more than a restrained sigh. Clurie made it to Chauhn's side, standing next to him with his ashen arms folded across his chest, and his black gaze narrowed down at his unusually quiet Grimm. "I asked you a question, Clemmings." He reached up into his hand, stuffing his stray curly bangs into the rim of his hat. The wind was blowing his hair into his face.

"Since when did you start to care?" Chauhn countered. His voice was strangely absent of vehemence or hurt, strangely strong. This wasn't like the Chauhn Clemmings Clurie knew. Chauhn Clemmings was a ridiculously emotional young man, broken from his tragic past, but attempting to polish himself to a shine despite the cracks. He had no shame in crying, he readily displayed his emotions, most often without meaning to and if he meant it, it was all the more poignant. His emotions were out of control, and here, in the thing perched up on the rib of the flying buttress, the emotions were choked up, beaten into submissions and gagged. This wasn't like Chauhn. Clurie knew that he was terrified of Chauhn specifically for the reason that his emotions were perpetually at either end of the emotional spectrum, radical in every way, but seeing Chauhn without them disturbed him even more. Clurie scrunched his face down into a displeased snarl, the taste of his own cynicism bitter on his tongue.

"Because whether I like it or not, you're my Grimm, and whether I like it or not, you are in some way my responsibility," Clurie said. He shifted his stance, easily stepping down into a crouch beside his Grimm. He had no fear of heights, much like his counterpart, so when he looked down at Chauhn's feet were they hung off the edge, a mere push's away from certain death, he felt nothing but a feathery sense of concern for his Grimm's stability. He looked over at Chauhn, staring hard at him. "You owe it to me, Clemmings, you've made a promise out of that."

"I do," Chauhn said in simple agreement, "I did make a promise of that. And I intend to keep it." Silence. The wind fluttered about them, sounding like the haunting flight of crows whipping about their heads.

"So what are you doing here?" Clurie pressed again. He swung himself down onto the ledge so that he too was dangling his feet off the ledge, glancing again at Chauhn with less and less irritation. He couldn't help but loose his anger, it was hard to keep it for long around Chauhn, which was why Clurie so often ran away from him, so that he could rekindle his anger.

"This isn't like you."

Chauhn stiffened. He kept his gaze locked down between his knees at the distant ground below. There was more silence as he struggled for words, internally battling with his emotional self that he struggled so hard to tame. "...I know. That's the point."

"What is?" Clurie asked, a hint of ire in his voice at the curt reply, "I don't understand you. Why would you want to be anything other than you?"

"Because I get myself into more trouble than I can handle. I can't suffer through so much, Clurie, without breaking down again. I promised you that I wouldn't do something like that, not after what I did to you. The only way I can make sure that doesn't happen is if I just..." Chauhn's voice began to wobble, and he bit his teeth together, gritting hard as he fought to maintain his strength of face, "If I just cut everything away, make myself not feeling anything. If I can do that, I can deal with everything that's happening. Then I won't have to worry about hurting you. Even when I try not to, I somehow manage to..."

Clurie stared at Chauhn, his face softening even more as his Grimm spoke. He, himself, was a confused mix of emotions, and it made him feel all the more unsettled as he sat beside him, but what disturbed him all the more was the pity he felt developing in his stomach. Clurie looked away, looking down at his own feet as he gripped tight at the stone beneath him. He had to say something though, whether he liked it or not, and he was nervous to admit that he was feeling partially at fault.

"Look, Clemmings..." Clurie said, his own voice a shadow of the strength that it once was, "You're really stupid sometimes, you do a lot of stupid things, but...You're doing something even stupider right now. You're hurting me by doing this."

The shoulders of the Clemmings boy began to jump.

The Quietus, as his namesake suggested, whispered something more. His own gut recoiled from the fact that he had said it, and he too twitched in on himself with tense anticipation, "...You shouldn't try to be something you're not...Just...When you're you, don't...Be so dumb."

Looking still between his feet, Clurie stared at his legs as he kicked them, trying to get rid of some of the pent up nervous energy that welled up within the top of his gut. It was when he was looking at the swing of his heels, though, that he noticed something glint, falling down to the small world below. Clurie blinked, and sure enough, there it was again, a series of little glints, drifting down into oblivion. He furrowed his brows, and then, with slow tilt to his head, looked to the side and to Chauhn. The boy was hunched over his knees, his hands pressed to either side of his temple, his shoulders jumping as he let drop after precious drop of familiar Clemmings tears roll down his cheeks and drop from his chin. He was incredibly quiet, but Clurie was sure that, with a few minutes' time, Chauhn would be bawling aloud, unashamed and unrestrained from showing his grief and sorrow.

Clurie felt like he had done something good.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Thick as Thieves |[ . . . ..
April 15th, 1411

Quote:

Things are starting to change around Shyregoed, and there's no changing it. Mages or not, the Fellowship bases are being cleared out by the Imperial Guard and by a few trickster and apparently more "higher-up" Mages for the past few days, though few reasons are being given. Rank or not, you're being personally asked to leave your quarters and head to a safer part of the province until the new Grand Magus is designated to his or her proper spot in Anica, and the coronation is starting in secret.
The bad part, though, is that they're asking you to leave many of your things behind, and the request was rather brash, if not a tad rude. As a Mage, you have one of two choices: You can either leave the Fellowship fortresses for the time being while things settle down for the faction or, optionally, go against the Guard and the Fellowship's will and stay put where you are. If you do stay where you are, expect trouble from corrupted mages near your area that will try to uproot your area and, worst of all, try to strip your rank from the Fellowship. How do you react, and what is the consequence?

Without his Lord to speak up for him, Chauhn and Clurie are bothered and harassed by the guards, who insist that they leave the fortress of Anica. Chauhn and Clurie retreat to the Malts and discuss their situation with them.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Wait for High Tide |[ . . . ..
April 19th, 1411

Quote:

One thing is for sure-- none of you have any information about the Grand Magus, the state of the Fellowship, nor the state of your nation or the health of your family. Crows are infiltrating your area, you are being pushed into a state of complete disarray, and no one knows any more than you do, at this point. You hear announcement of a major rally in Anica on April the 19th, the day that the new Grand Magus will reveal his-self or herself after the official coronation. Nearly everyone in Shyregoed has gone to these coronations in the past and it's extremely unlikely that you'd be one to miss it, especially if you are a province native. But hear-say of these riots are plotting a murder and eventual destruction of the Anican castles-- how do you prepare for the post-coronation on the 19th? Do you plan to join the riots, or do you plan to stand before the Anican castle and heed to the new Grand Magus?

As safe as they can be away from the riots boiling beneath the castle, the Malts and Clemmings watch from a distance as Lady Sage is made Grand Magus for the broken Fellowship.
.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| You Know No One True |[ . . . ..
April 20th, 1411

Quote:

All that's left of the cultists now are quiet and disappointment. Even those who are of Obsucvan faith feel an eerie level of silence, as if they're being shunned, and it seems like the cultists are nowhere near in sight. It seems as if they've never been there at all, as if the House of Obscuvos was never there to begin with. What's worse, though, is the dissonance between your senses and everything around you. After this series of events and the troubles with Obscuvos himself, you end your week with a final visitation by a single man, who is bespectacled and ghastly, impossible to touch but entirely there.
If you try to interact with him, he simply smiles, autonomously greeting you. He says, "It was a pleasure to get to know you these past six weeks, but I'm afraid it's my time to go. The Plague Doctor has a new competitor-- I am him, and it looks like you and your Plague might have to get used to more visits with your new ally."
He salutes you by taking off his hat and bowing and, whisking himself away in the wind, disintegrating like dust, the only thing that's left of him is one thing--
A dead crow, like the ones you've seen these past six weeks...

It had been decided.

Chauhn and Clurie Clemmings were now apprentices underneath Georgie and Adal's training. It wasn't written down or official, but, after Chauhn's discharging from Lord Yizhaq's service, forlorn and rather lost, scrambling for some duty to direct himself with, the Malts had kindly looked upon their traveling companions and offered them further tutelage. After all, they knew magic, and better yet, could speak more plainly than anyone else to Chauhn about the uses of it and the control. Learning with them would be much easier for him, as it would be for Clurie too. Both Clemmings needed to learn control, and it was a blessing from the Malts that they, even after the debt of kindness that they were slowly building upon Chauhn's shoulders, would take them in again, and now with more conditions, of which Chauhn was happy to have, and Clurie too. Clurie was visibly relieved that he wouldn't be left alone with Chauhn, aimless and untethered to anything but Chauhn's wobbly self. While learning magic, they would also teach the both of the Clemmings how to read and write, something Chauhn and Clurie did sparingly between chores. So exhausted were they after their day's duties, that Chauhn would often pass out on top of his practice tablets and Clurie would push them aside and wander away on the first interesting stray wind. Adal and Georgie, with little chores to offer the Clemmings in return for their group of boys' maintenance, could engage them in more learning than their previous lord. At least Chauhn could speak coherently now, instead of his broken accent he had taken so long to discard. They had already started teaching them, naming specific stores and streets that the Clemmings would have to visit on that brisk spring day to gather the appropriate wares and clothing that they would need. He would have to read the streets to get there.

Chauhn was no longer a page, and neither was Clurie, so their clothes were traded in to the mages for pieces of silver. They clinked together in Chauhn's pocket as he walked away from the main castle grounds to the market square. The only clothes Chauhn had left were his augur threads, which spoke loudly of his involvement with the mages with their brands of purple and strips of gold. His urchin clothes had long since been taken away by Yihzaq's servants, disgusted by the state of them, and they had probably been thrown away. Chauhn felt a little remorse for the loss of those clothes, for they were direct ties to his childhood, when he was a newly made boy of the streets, but, like what that urchin part of him taught him, things come and go, and he would have to forget to feel sorrow for what's gone. He had to learn that for everything, and he only had trouble with forgetting the pain he had for his lost family. He was getting much better at it now, and looking at Clurie, who stayed within an arm's reach beside him as they strolled casually through the cobblestone streets, he felt only guilt for events past, not guilt for the boy he looked like. Clurie was, even at that moment, focusing on his hands and legs, trying to will them entirely into boyish skin from the ashes and embers that they were carved from.

"Clurie, you're going to waste all your energy like that," Chauhn said offhandedly as he stared at some street signs. The letters upon them danced chaotically in Chauhn's brain, making it hard for him to make them out. "Why are you trying to make your arms flesh anyway? I thought you hated the human form."

Clurie glanced quickly aside to Chauhn, his black eyes returning back to his hands. You think I want to look like a Plague this far out into town away from the castle?" he said in response. He made another glance to Chauhn and nodded at his augur's clothing, "It's like you and your clothes. Could you be any more obvious? We're trying to slip quickly into town, get some clothes that won't make us so obviously related to the mages, and slip back out before anything can happen. I don't want to help things along by looking like a, what do you call it? looking like a monster?"

Chauhn let his gaze slip away from Clurie, a heavy sigh weighing down his shoulders. It had been a week and a day since their moment of harmonious understanding, and things had at least gotten tolerable between them. Clurie was no longer so harsh to him, though spikes of it returned every so often to test Chauhn's defenses, and Chauhn was more or less accepting of his Plague being nothing but a mere image of his brother. There were times when Chauhn was caught staring at Clurie with a forlorn sadness only spoken by the glaze of tears over his eyes. The point is that they were able to be in each other's company again without one beating up the other or one weeping with reckless abandon just to see the other breathe. They had reached a platform on which their relationship could settle.

Then there were instances like these where their relationship would wobble precariously off to the side.

"Clurie, I would rather you didn't waste your energy," said Chauhn, picking one street over the other once he was able to sound out the word stapled upon it. He reached back and tugged Clurie along after him. "It's not like it's so dangerous out here. Look around, Clurie, it feels terrible empty."

Clurie wiggled himself free from Chauhn's leading hand, pushing his arm away. He gave up on forcing his limbs into flesh, and let them crackle back into the elongated claws that they were, using them to gesture grandly at the empty streets. "That's because this place IS terrible empty, Clemmings!"

Chauhn walked along, trying to peek down adjacent alleyways and streets, windows and doorways, for signs of life. There were a few people scattered about, mostly tucked away in their houses and businesses, but there were very few scuttling about on the streets. It seemed like a cold day rather than a day suspicious of danger, people weren't scared and skittering about into the shadows like cockroaches. They looked like they were just trying to escape the chill. "It's strange," Chauhn insisted, "Not that it's a bad strange. Just strange. I don't feel frightened of the Obscuvians...I don't feel like they're a threat here at all. It's just a strange quiet, and that's strange. Very strange..."

"What's that?" Clurie drawled sarcastically, "I didn't quite hear you."

"It's strange."

"That's what I thought you said."

The Clemmings turned a corner, onto the main market street, a quaint and pleasant looking area, lined with shops and built about a center fountain, which was still dry from the winter wait, and some trees struggling to burst into flower. Upon locating the seller's square, Chauhn choked on breathing a sigh of relief. A man was standing before them. As pallid as the grey sky hanging above them, the man stood with purpose before the Clemmings a mere arm's length away from Chauhn. He was tall and bespectacled, a faint hint of a smile slathered onto his thin lips as he stared down at the young augur and his Plague.

Almost immediately, Chauhn sucked in a breath to scream branches at him, but Clurie was the quicker, jumping up between Chauhn and the man. Chauhn choked on his scream again, prompting himself to cough on his own breath, while the Quietus before him threw up his fingers into two long rapiers of solidified ash, bearing them before the man in a protective brace.

"Pardon us, good sir," Clurie sneered, and with a puff of his cheeks into ember flame, he took a threatening step towards the man.

The man, though, didn't move. He stood, still smiling down at the ash Quietus and his Grimm, uncaring of the quiet threat the former made to him. Instead, with a push of his spectacles, he opened his mouth and spoke, a slight tilt to his head as if he were talking to fledgling boys. "It was a pleasure to get to know you these past six weeks, but I'm afraid it's my time to go. The Plague Doctor has a new competitor-- I am him, and it looks like you and your Plague might have to get used to more visits with your new ally."

"So impolite, sir! Give us your good name, so that I can smear it!" Clurie roared, and he nearly lurched forward if it wasn't for Chauhn's steadying hands on his shoulders, dragging him back to watch as the man plucked his hat off his head with the pinch of his thumb and finger, and bowed forward, forcing boy Chauhn and Clurie to stumble back to avoid him and his haunting smile. With mouths agape, they stared as his contours and colors whipped away into the wind, blown apart like dust by a stray gust that didn't belong in the throat of the alley.

"Hey, come back!" Clurie shouted after the wind, giving a firm and angry slice through the wind with his ash rapiers, "We never properly introduced ourselves! Come back!"

But Chauhn pointed down between them, to the space left behind. Broken upon the pavement, like an egg in summer, was a twisted black crow.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| And No One Knows You |[ . . . ..
April 20th, 1411

Quote:

...And even those are starting to fade away from existence, or, shall we say, be returning to normal.
As the week passes by each and every one of these crows, once heavy as lead when they were deceased, are becoming lighter and lighter by the hour. By the end of it streets are being flooded with floating crows, which are seemingly impossible to throw away, even if you try-- if you do, don't worry, they'll come alive and fly away the very instant you lay your finger on it. The strange thing, though, is that these armies of dead and now-floating crows are taking a strange leap into transformation as the days go by. These birds are now turning into robed husks, like the cultists that were following you only a few weeks ago, and threatened to attack you. While those cultists from earlier might have seemed completely sentient and human in thought process, these ones are shades of human beings, as black in aura as they were when they were crows.
If you are around these dead crows, they'll make on last chase after you, armies of them near you transforming instant by instant, one by one. They will chase you until they can't chase you anymore, until they've transformed back into a seeping black goop-- the familiar scent of Putescos and the Furvus Elixir-- but how well do you fare and how many chase you?
Most importantly, take care of not being harmed by the remaining goop...

It took a while to convince Clurie to stow away his ash made weapons, and longer still for he and Clurie to convince themselves to start breathing regularly. After dodging the crow, and other crows like it, which seemed to be springing out of no where, lying about like trash on the ground, Chauhn and Clurie jumped into a tailor's shop, choosing to hide within it as they spent what little silver they had on traveling clothes for the both of them, and a set of new clothes for Chauhn to hide his ties to the Fellowship. They bought thick cotton socks and a poet shirt for Chauhn, which was hidden under a thick woolen tunic with sleeves, and a thick vest. He also bought a pair of knee length legging which insulated him from the cold underneath a pair of brown slacks that went just past his knees. A pair of leather shoes would be bought for him next door at the cobbler's with the last of their silver. Clurie was content enough with thick traveler's jacket, since he would most likely burn whatever clothing he put on that wasn't magically reinforced against his natural heat. It had taken them a better part of the day, getting there, getting lost, and getting their clothes, until they were ready to start out again. With their new wares bought and tucked away into bags for transportation, Chauhn and Clurie took respective anxious gulps and stepped out from underneath the awnings of the stores and into the evening of a waking nightmare.

The streets were littered with crows. Not just any crows, too. Chauhn and Clurie would've been able to more or less hop between the crows and rush back to the Anican castle if they were just scattered about on the floor, that was a sight that they were used to, but with the crows floating up in the streets, a morbid festival of blackened birds, the Clemmings were more or less frozen in place with fear.

Clurie was the first to step out, his footsteps ginger and light, like he would be able to burst into flight at any moment. When he was able to step out without bothering one of the floating birds, he beckoned back at Chauhn to follow in his wake. "Follow in my steps, Clemmings. We move with haste." Chauhn nodded and carefully followed suit, his bag of recently purchased clothes over his shoulder.

They were able to wander out into the square, setting their sights on the distant Anican castle, without err, but it wasn't long until the nightmare like a slumbering monster began to stir. With bated breaths, the Clemmings watched with fear as the crows themselves, hanging like ornaments of Obscuvos in the air, began to twist and lengthen. Their feathers dropped down into long robes, fluttering about the feet of shuffling Obscuvians, but they didn't seem entirely there, only ghosts, mimics of reality drifting about in the streets. At first, Chauhn and Clurie were able to rush by, the former whispering to the latter to keep moving, the latter whispering to the former to hurry up, but they had only just barely made it out of the streets surrounding the market square before the robed husks began noticing the fleeing boys. With birdlike twitch of their heads, they twisted and turned to watch as Chauhn and Clurie scrambled by.

"Clurie!" Chauhn hissed, running behind his Plague as closely as he could manage, "They're noticing us!"

Clurie reached back to take a whole of Chauhn's arm, flinging him into a running pace beside him. They spun into an adjacent street, rushing past another group of floating Obscuvians, who, with heads snapping on their necks, followed their passage with beady eyes. "It's not like we're being particularly subtle, Clemmings!" Clurie shouted at his Grimm as he looked back over his shoulder. Behind him, stumbling in mad glee towards them, were the robed Cultists, jumping and crawling after them, flying in a collected train of black behind them. They were noiseless. Chauhn and he hadn't just left them to stare at them as they ran by, they picked up their robes and chased after. With his voice nearly lodging in his throat against the newly risen bile of panic, Clurie tightened his grip underneath Chauhn's arm, and burst forward with new speed. "Run! Just run!" he screamed, "There's an army after us!"

Chauhn didn't need to be told twice. Easily reigning his fear into his legs, the Clemmings boy leaned forward and with a grit of his teeth scrambled into a run that made Clurie stumble to keep after him. Each floating crow that they passed quickly exploded into the form of a running Obscuvian, arms and legs outstretched to catch up to them, and Chauhn and Clurie, with every new addition to their mob of garish Cultists, would gasp and force their bodies to run faster. Throwing themselves into walls as they twisted and dived through the streets of Anica, Chauhn and Clurie shouted directions at each other as they blindly navigated the streets, a silent army tickling their heels. They never hesitated at street corners, somehow thankfully bound in unison of their decisions for which street to skitter down, but when Chauhn felt the fingers of Cultists grasping for the clothes on his back, he threw his hand towards some boxes and leaped for them, Clurie following suit with a confused shout. Jumping onto the crates, Chauhn switched into urchin mode, his mind scanning their environment with every blink for some alternative route.

"We'll never escape them if we keep running in the streets!" Chauhn shouted in response to Clurie's panicked garbles, and without a second's warning, he leaped from the tower of crates onto a nearby awning. Clurie, still holding tight to Chauhn, jumped as well, crying out as he landed and spared a moment to glance behind them to the Cultists, who smashed and scrambled against the crates to try and follow. He would have stared longer if it weren't for Chauhn nudging his ribs, and when he looked back to the boy, he found one end of Chauhn's leather belt in his hand, hung over the top of a empty laundry line. A second later, Chauhn had jumped off the awning, and a second more after that Clurie was yanked from the shingles a mere second's length away from the crash of Obscuvians in pursuit. They were whisked into the air, hanging onto either side of Chauhn's belt which zip lined across the length of the alley into an adjacent street. Bounced against one another, their legs kicking through the air, the Clemmings boy shouted with surprise as the wire holding them snapped just moments before they crashed into another low hanging roof. Leaving wood crackling into roots in his wake, Chauhn picked himself up from the shingles to stare behind them were the Cultists wasted no time in changing their pursuit. They were impossible to trick it seemed, and Chauhn, which all his mind's gears whirling away, couldn't figure any way to shake them off. Clurie, though, was yanking at him, pulling him away to hop from the roofing and onto a balcony. Scrambling from one balcony to another, Chauhn frantically scanned the area about them for some kind of hidden alcove or escape, but for naught. He had hardly a moment to swear their luck before Clurie yanked them towards the already cracked window of an abandoned house, smashing the glass in with the slam of his elbow, and pulled them both inside with the backwards kick of his feet. They landed on their spines on the dusty floor of the house, knocking the breath from their lungs that they struggled to breathe as they rolled up and onto their knees on the floor. Pressing to the window behind them were the shades of the Obscuvians, hardly phased by their unorthodox running tactics, leaving them no time to catch their breath. They pushed themselves away from the window, tiredly spurning themselves around and over the forgotten furniture towards the window opposite, a pale square of bluish evening light, while behind them the sound of feathers scratching against the glass grew into a crescendo. Chauhn, panting, was first the reach the window and he struggled against it, trying with all his might to push it open, but the window was rusted fast. Clurie, a second later, smashed into the window beside him, struggling to push it open with help from Chauhn, but also to no avail. Behind them, the birds exploded into the room after them, filling the darkness of the house with a pitch even blacker than the shadows.

"Hurry!" Chauhn screamed, and along with his scream the timber shook about the house, the floorboards between their aggressors bursting into a protective forest. Clurie slammed his elbow against the window, but failed to break through it. He cursed aloud and rubbed his elbow, switching himself about to try with the other, but his efforts only succeeded in a dull thud of bone against glass. He howled in pain, before he hopped back and threw his leg against it, kicking at it as hard as he could with the heel of his foot. Only a crack surfaced in the glass. Chauhn, nearby, and struggling to gather more breath, watched with panic, his bag clutched between his hands, as Clurie struggled, but his legs were tired and weak from running. He didn't have enough strength to kick through. Behind them, on the other side of the protective forest, the Cultists cawed and bayed, snapping and pressing themselves through like shadowy jelly.

"Hurry, Clurie, hurry!" Chauhn screamed again. Another thicket rose up between them, a crackling of woods, but the Obscuvians still pressed through. Breathing hard, Chauhn looked to Clurie, who, unable to kick anymore, had braced his hands on either side of the window frame and had smashed his forehead against it, furthering the cracks of the window, but not breaking it through. With his knees nearly buckling beneath him, Clurie held himself up with his grip on the window, and he glanced over at Chauhn with the dizzy roll of his black eyes. His Plague blood, blood like molten fire, seeped down his forehead along the bridge of his nose, darkening into wisps of ash.

Chauhn's stomach jumped up into his throat, choking him from screaming Clurie's name as he rushed to Clurie's side, the same moment that the magic made copse of trees about them was broken through by the surrounding press of Cultists. Chauhn had just managed to wrap his fingers about Clurie's shoulder when he heard the rush of feathers inches away from his ears. Instinct twisted his head to the side to catch the terrible collective gaze of dozens of Cultists diving in upon them, their beady eyes focused upon him like the drawn obsidian arrowheads of an army of archers, just as Clurie fell forward and onto his shoulder. Chauhn only had a few moments to realize that Clurie was weaving his arms about him, only a few moments to breathe in the same single breath's worth of air between him and the Cultists, before the world exploded into ash. Through the crack, the ash swept with an invisible wind just moments before the Cultists crashed into the other side of the window, and on the other side, stumbling against the slippery shingles, were the Clemmings reformed from the ash and bewildered. Chauhn only had a few moments to realize that Clurie was more out of sorts than he, than the shingles beneath his feet were loose, and that they were stumbling down the slope of the roof towards an open atrium, before he was able to give a gasp loud enough to communicate his slow realization of all this. With his last glance being the terrified stare at the Obscuvians sandwiched and pressed against the other side of the cracked window, Chauhn, with Clurie still leaning against him, dazed and tired, and literally falling apart into ash, fell back off the roof.

It was to Clurie's luck that the pool in the atrium was dry, but Chauhn's ill fortune. He hit hard against the tile, his breath blasted out of his lungs by the fall, and he could only stare in wide eyed shock as his spine struggled to scream to the rest of his body through the pain of the fall. His bag of clothes fell free and bounced to the side of the empty pool. Clurie fell beside him just as hard, though parts of him exploded into ash from the impact, his limbs nothing more than a cloud of settling dark. There he laid, gasping like fish thrown up onto an unforgiving shore, his black eyes nothing more than tired slits.

It took longer than Chauhn anticipated to convince his body to respond to his urging to push himself up from the ground, but when he managed to, he knelt beside Clurie and began the slow revival of his Plague. Weariness of this caliber had only happened once before, and that was when Clurie had lost two of his limbs to Obscuvian battle, and the way that Chauhn had nursed him back was by feeding him branches, blankets, and other burnable things. He had no paper on him, no branches either, his voice was more or less spent, but Chauhn did have his clothes. He started ripping off his own jacket, pushing it towards Clurie's mouth and whispering at him to eat, when he felt something drip against the nape of his neck.

While Clurie began half heartedly chewing at the offered fabric, Chauhn slowly lifted his head and turned about, his gaze drifting up to the edge of the atrium roof. Those same dozens of Cultists that had been chasing them had gathered there, a murder of crows and more, roosting on the edge with beady eyes glaring down at him and his Plague. Then, with Chauhn still staring at them in open mouthed shock, they silently collapsed into a black rain, a drowning of pitch and sludge, that blinded Chauhn where he knelt over Clurie's body until all he could see was black.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| It Doesn't End Here |[ . . . ..
April 21nd, 1411

Drowning. That's what it felt like to the Clemmings boy as he broke free from the black sludge with the push of his shoulders, gasping for air that still smelled thick of the Obscuvian taint. He was panicking, his arms still buried in the muck but he would not leave his plague in the black. With another strain and another heave, Chauhn wrenched his Quietus' body from the pitch and into his arms, folding him over his shoulder. Another kick and throw of his legs, the frustrated growl of a boy trapped in tar, and Chauhn was able to pull himself and Clurie out from the black. Clurie was bleary and weak, but he was awake, scrambling onto Chauhn for a tighter hold, hungry and biting his clothes wherever he could, desperate for sustenance. His hands and feet were peeling away into the air, limp and shapeless. Chauhn winced from the times Clurie's teeth dug into his thin skin underneath, but kept himself quiet. They had to get out of there.

Hoisting Clurie's body into his arms so he could hold his skinny plague above the swirl of pitch and black, Chauhn waded through the aftermath of Obscuvian sludge, picked up his bag, and pushed towards the nearest exit. He hadn't gone four steps before he was weeping aloud, overwhelmed by the scene around them. Never did he stop, stepping forward that was, and never did he stop his dry weeping as he shouldered his way through doors and climbed over obstacles, running away and running through the maze of the street until he no longer recognized where they were. He had been staring at the blank faces of the walls around him, the precarious lean of roofs and the forgotten piles of crates, when Clurie's constant nibbling at his shoulder awoke him from his paranoid gander. He looked down to him and realized that they were both covered with dirt and grime. They had to wash off. Chauhn didn't know if the black sludge they were covered in caused any harm, but he certainly didn't want to test it and find out. Clurie was still weak.

Gulping, Chauhn blinked his swollen eyes and drifted along the streets of an abandoned neighborhood, a quarantined area no doubt rife with the plague. They would be safe here for a little while yet, Chauhn knew, and he searched for a public bathhouse to wash off the grime. Luckily, he was able to come across one that had been left alone, evacuated so that the insides remained usable. Chauhn stepped inside, listening to the resounding echoes of his footsteps' patter bouncing off the tile walls. He looked down to Clurie, who had eaten through all the clothing on Chauhn's shoulder. He was open mouthed like a feeding bird, quietly demanding more. Chauhn sobbed in reply.

Knowing full well that his Plague would only grow weaker is he was dropped into a bath, not only weaken but potentially die, Chauhn set him in the driest part of the bathhouse possible, well away from anything that could potentially harm him. Clurie slumped in his designated corner, blinking at Chauhn as the boy dropped their bag to the side and began pulling off his jacket, vest and shirt. His page clothes would no longer be needed by him, but they were needed by Clurie. Offering them one at a time to his starving Quietus, Chauhn stripped himself until all that remained were his shorts and shoes. Clurie, in response, was quiet and intensely focused on his newly bequeathed meal, stuffing his face full of the fabric until it burned into a crisp in his mouth. The smell of burning clothes filled his corner. Presently, he grew stronger with every bite and chew, his limbs reforming and solidifying as he gorged himself on Chauhn's old clothes. His energy was beginning to return too, although he often coughed and choked whenever he ate too fast. He had hardly noticed that Chauhn had drifted away, shivering as he sought the means to wash himself off. He discovered a small bathing area and dropped himself to the floor, maneuvering himself under the cold faucet to scrub at his arms and chest. It didn't take too long until Chauhn was weeping aloud, half heartedly rubbing at his burned shoulders and running his hands through his hair.

"Choke on your fist, Clemmings, health and mighty..." swore Clurie after a couple minutes of quiet passed between them. He had finished his meal and he was breathing better, his black eyes opened wide and his head craning to see exactly where Chauhn was positioned in the bathhouse. As soon as he was sure of his whereabouts, Clurie relaxed and looked down at himself and his grimy clothes. He didn't know quite what to do to wash them off, but, following in Chauhn's stead, he began to peel off the layers and lay them out on the tile floor. When he was stripped down to his skivvies he stood up, wobbling at first until he was able to stand straight and tall, then he bent down, grabbed his clothes and shuffled carefully to Chauhn. For a few minutes, he watched his Grimm as he wept under the faucet, washing his feet, and then he dropped his clothes near the boy.

"Can you wash these?" Clurie asked. Chauhn nodded in return, taking the clothes one by one into the faucet with them and scrubbing them together with his hands. Clurie made sure that he wasn't anywhere near the water before he crouched down onto his haunches and watched Chauhn helplessly from the side. He looked down at himself, noticed what little grime was still smeared onto his skin and he rubbed away furiously at it until it burned and flaked away, leaving him clean. He screwed his mouth into a frown, thought about thanking his Grimm for the sacrifice of his clothes, thought twice, and disregarded the notion entirely. What he did do, though, was give a loud exaggerated sigh. "Will you ever stop weeping, you weeping willow?" he asked Chauhn.

The Clemmings boy gave a pathetic shrug of his shoulders, soaking Clurie's shirt in the water of the faucet. He strengthened his resolve, though, stiffened his shoulders, and tried to set his mouth straight from the trembling curve it fell into.

"Seriously," Clurie persisted, holding his head with his palm. "What are you weeping about anyway? We got away from those feathery bastards, didn't we? We're fine! I'm fine now, and you've got only a few bruises and scratches, nothing to soak your eyes over. Why do you still keep crying?"

Chauhn wrung Clurie's shirt between his hands, squeezing and pulling the knot taut until he could get as much water as he could from the fabric. He crawled to the side, laid out the shirt on the tile, and then moved onto the next article of clothing. At length, he gave a shrug and muttered, "I just wasn't prepared for all that, Clurie. I thought it was over. It scared me, it did. I thought we were done for." As an afterthought, he pointed to the shirt on the floor, "See if you can dry that up without burning it."

"Without burning it," Clurie echoed mockingly. He waved his arms in exasperation and crawled over to where the shirt lay, "Clemmings, I can't burn these clothes, they're a part of me. They don't burn."

"Oh, right..." Chauhn's voice began to wobble again and he lowered his head as he washed the next set of clothes, "I'm sorry."

Clurie rolled his head back on his shoulders, letting loose another long and exasperated growl. "Don't get all worked up about that, Clemmings, health! You're such a cry baby, why do you do that? Did those robed freaks really bother you that much?"

Chauhn nodded his head, biting his teeth into a bitter grimace, "They did! Alright? They did. They scared me, Clurie, they really did...We can't fight them, and we can only run for so long. What if we get caught? What if we get cornered again, like we almost did, back there? What then? How can I protect you from that?"

Clurie pushed his hands against the tile, focusing his strength into the clay so that it warmed up underneath his wet clothes. As he listened to Chauhn, he watched as the shirt changed hues, signs of it drying, and when the boy was finished he sighed again and turned a furrow of his brows at the boy. He sat up straight and threw his arm out with frustration. "Chauhn, listen to yourself! All those what if's! You're so stupid sometimes, you know that? Those are things we can't figure out until they happen and there's no use crying about it now! Crying will do you no good. It makes you weaker. So stop it! If you want to have any chance of protecting me and yourself, you've first got to stop letting them get to you like that! That's what the enemy wants. They want to get at you and make you cry, make you weak. If you're weak in here," Clurie jabbed his pointed finger back at himself, tapping his monster claw against his chest, "Then you're helpless all throughout and nothing can save you, even all your screaming and branches and magic whatever will do nothing to help you. Not of you let them get in here. Get it?"

Chauhn looked up from where he wrung Clurie's clothes in his fists, his face wet with tears. He stared hard at his Plague, trying to decipher his harsh words until he understood the kindness hidden within them. That was enough for Chauhn. His weary and haggard face twisted up into a smile. He relaxed. He smiled.

"I get it," he said softly in reply.

The Quietus, glad at least to no longer have to listen to Chauhn's annoying sniffles, set back to work on drying his clothes as Chauhn offered him the next batch of clothes to dry. He mumbled, shaking out the ash in his wavy locks, and focused in on his work. Chauhn was still glancing at him happily from where he finished washing himself off under the faucet. When Chauhn offered him the last of Clurie's clothing to dry, Clurie made a gulp, and rethought again.

"Hey," he said.

Chauhn paused and looked at him expectantly.

Clurie screwed his mouth into a frown, thought, thought twice, and accepted the notion entirely.

"Thank you."

"For what?" Chauhn asked. He sounded genuinely confused.

Clurie sighed, his cheeks alighting as his brows furrowed low. "For your clothes. Letting me eat them. Thanks."

Chauhn smiled and looked away.

"Don't think you're going to be able to get away with that for a second time, Clurie. I only have one outfit left," Chauhn said. He stooped and bowed his head underneath the faucet.

Clurie looked away and burrowed himself into his toasty shirt. He was glad for the momentary tent, wrestling his arms through the sleeves, because he, too, was smiling and he didn't want Chauhn to see.

.. . . . ..

 

[Storei]

.. . . . ]| Lonesome Orphan |[ . . . ..
May 3rd, 1411

Quote:

CHAUHN CLEMMINGS
lonesome orphan


A crow is waiting for you, a piece of parchment clutched in its beak, crinkled and wrapped in black ribbon.

The crow isn't the same kind of dead husk as the one that seemingly started this mess, it eyes beady and watery and its feathers ruffled with the thin details of lighting and shade, with no staunch and pestilent aura about it. When you try to reach for it, the crow merely hops away and drops the parchment without a second's thought, dumbly cooing about until you either catch it or until it decides to fly away into a distance, its wingers lazily fluttering about it. The parchment doesn't unwrap itself, but the ribbon's grip slips easily and the parchment is crispy to the touch if you try to open it.

Once you do open it, however, the piece of paper is wordless, but it gives off a tired but satisfied laugh, the same old and starkest voice out of the pond of whispers that spoke to you around the ides of March. "What a successful trial this was," the voice coos while the parchment withers and falls between your fingers as specks of dust, "I must say, all you Grimms are a troubled lot."

The ribbon seeps and liquefies, sunk in a black aura, and without a moment's warning it slinks over to you like a tired beast. Instead of disappearing, it juts and freezes in form, moment by moment twitching in mass, exhausting back into the liquefied form, then becoming bigger and bigger as the moments pass. Then, gasping, reeling over onto itself, it dissipates into a black mass again and separates itself into six suffering, lively forms, limbs entangled upon each other as they crawled and slowly turned into husks of human beings.

"You see, I've learned something from all of you, what two-thousand and growing lot there are, and what few hundred have seemingly passed my trials alive. This aura, this Furvus Elixir, it's truly what you make of it... and I've been deceived all along, and so have you. Welcome to my world of smoke and mirrors."

The black forms with limbs roll over, shivering and crumpled in upon themselves, now fully in form. Necks arched upward, they look at you, their hands clung to each others'. Their faces are featureless save for pairs of glimmering white and pearl-round eyes and dotted smiles, that of a Plague's. Bells are wrung around their necks while they walk toward you in unison, the very picture of the Clemmings siblings. The tallest ones, one male in form and the other female, take one step closer and embrace you in a tight hug.

"Oh, Chauhn," the female says, pulling you back to look at you, "We're so sorry..."

"But what's done is done," the male says, looking back at the other four, "But the Clemmings are together again, right?"

Two identical forms nod in unity, giving you bright smiles, their cheeks pressed against one another's. "Always!"

The tall female figure wraps her hand around yours and tightens her grip, trying to pull you forward. "Won't you join us?"

"Please, brother," the smallest figure says, toddling forward. It gives you a hug and wraps its hand around your free one, tugging at your sleeve, "I've missed you a lot."

Just as the two figures pull you toward them and start to walk, all six husks of the Clemmings walking beside you, they start to melt like candle wax. They trip to the floor in a shroud of black liquid rung around you, and you're left alone once again.

The sky turned stained by the black of night as the Clemmings hunkered down in the abandoned bathhouse. While the tile was cold, it became a perfect conductor for heat, and once moved into the steam room, Clurie and Chauhn found themselves comfortable enough to brave the night. They agreed that they were too weary and too frightened to navigate the dark streets of Anica at night back to where they stayed with the Malts, so they made themselves a small fortress of the tile house. They had water there. Well, Chauhn did at least. Clurie had a couple left over towels that he used as fodder to eat and subsist on for the night. Thanks to his happy digestion, he was able to keep their small room warm enough to sleep in comfortably. they both used the rolled up bag of clothes or their jackets for pillows and slept without blankets. Clurie, for this one time only, allowed Chauhn to sleep nearer than he usually did, which was strange because he often demanded that they sleep on opposite corners. Chauhn was content to sleep close enough so that he didn't freeze on the hard tile. He had almost forgotten the nightmare that haunted them earlier in the day when he heard the scrape of talons skittering over the floor in the depths of the night.

Chauhn woke up with a start. With his eyes seeing nothing but blackness around them, he waited the few precious moments he would need for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He gulped, looked around, and then stoop up slowly, his arms ready by his sides and his lungs filled with the breath necessary to give a scream. Quiet.

Then another suffle and a caw. Chauhn startled again, his shoulders tensing up near his neck. Not wanting to leave Clurie out of whatever was going to happen, he groped near the ground for his Plague, finding him easily because of the dim glow in his cheeks. The Quietus awoke slowly, waving his arm at Chauhn in a sleepy attempt to push him away. His face scrunched up into an unhappy frown as he tried to bury his nose into the tile.

"Leave me alone, Chauhn...It's too early...Let me sleep just a little longer...We don't really have to get moving this early do we?" he groaned.

"Clurie! No, get up, I hear something!" Chauhn hissed back at his Plague. Unfortunately, it took a little longer for Clurie to rub his bleary black eyes and sit up than Chauhn was comfortably with. By the time that he was up on his bare feet, his own claws scratching against the floor, Chauhn was already plastered to the door frame of their small room, peering out into the darkness with fear. "I can't see it...It's there, but I can't see it."

Clurie moved up behind his Grimm, peering into the blackness that mirrored his eyes. He was slowly realizing the severity of their situation, and his body tensed in tandem, so he pushed his way out before his keeper. "I got this," Clurie said bitterly, raising his hand. With some effort from the plague, his hands lit up with a cough of flame, a torch to wield against the shadows. The sweat of the tile glimmered in reply, shimmering as Clurie lit up the vast area, and lo and behold, a living crow hopped into the light, twitching its head side to side. Chauhn froze, remembering the same black bird that bequeathed unto him the same letter that started their spring terrors. He reached out for Clurie, drawing him back behind him protectively.

"Go away!" Chauhn shouted at the bird, "Go!"

The bird stared dumbly, crinkled the rolled up parchment with the pinch of its beak, and hopped about in a circle. Chauhn was about to shout again when Clurie stalked out from behind him, slamming his feet into the tile and clapping his hands together. A burst of flame coughed forth from his hands and with a blow of his breath, the ashen Plague breathed a fountain of fire over the head of the bird. In response to the fireworks, the bird exploded into movement, fluttering and scrambling into flight as it hopped away back into the darkness of the bath house. A caw and a crow, and the black messenger was gone. Behind it, rolling to a stop in a groove, was the rolled up parchment.

"I'll burn it to ashes, eat it myself!" Clurie howled, stepping forward to snatch it, but Chauhn was the quicker. He jumped in front of Clurie, pushing him back and throwing his head into a wild shake.

"No, Clurie, don't! I won't have you hurting yourself again!" Chauhn bleated. He maneuvered them back to the doorway, nearly holding his Plague against the wall. "Do you want to become human again? Don't touch it, okay? I'll take care of it."

Clurie huffed, his midnight eyes narrowing as he puffed the embers in his cheeks. As Chauhn moved away from him, stepping carefully towards the parchment like it were a living thing, he wrung his palms together, sparking them alive again with flame. "Yeah, what gives you the right, Clemmings?" the Quietus growled after him.

Chauhn stepped over the tile, gulping nervously as he bent forward to pick up the parchment. He pressed his thumb against the soft velvet ribbon, watching the black shimmer as he created wrinkles, and smoothed it over and off the body of the parchment. "I started this. This is how it all started."

The ribbon fell to the floor and in unison with the unfurling of the parchment, it slithered and came to life. Chauhn had hardly enough time to digest the fact that the parchment was empty before he found himself beat upon by the sound of a familiar empty voice.

"What a successful trial this was. I must say, all you Grimms are a troubled lot."

Before Chauhn could even convince himself to feel angry, insulted by the casual tone of the voice, he was at once distracted by the warping and writhing on the floor. The black ribbon was stretching and pulling on itself, somehow folding and doubling itself in mass, growing and pressing against its frame. Drunkenly crawling towards him it came, a mess of black arms and legs that pushed and scratched against the tile as it fought to pull itself apart, beating itself into form like a beating heart. Chauhn was gasping, but he could easily hear the breath mimicking his own terrified gulps of air, the hissing that came from the pitch. Breathing, human like almost like his, even. It splint in twain, struggling to yank itself apart further as it unfurled and yanked at its own mass and weight. It split again, somehow gaining separate identities in movement, some gentle while others were panicked, some angry and others desperate until at last six shapes lay heavily gasping on the ground, melting out of their black skins like they had just pulled themselves from the tar.

"You see, I've learned something from all of you, what two-thousand and growing lot there are, and what few hundred have seemingly passed my trials alive. This aura, this Furvus Elixir, it's truly what you make of it... and I've been deceived all along, and so have you. Welcome to my world of smoke and mirrors."

With bowed heads, they retched over the ground. Their hair, dark like the pitch they came from, lay tangled in webs over their faces and Chauhn was momentarily grateful. Seizing up in his chest was a sense of fear growing more and more terrible with every moment that passed, fear of the faces that lay beneath those familiar silken knots of black. Behind him, he could hear Clurie shouting something, trying to get through the dome of numbness that descended upon him, but Chauhn waved back at him, trying not to break his gaze with the figures that crawled about him. There was a spark, the dry smell of burning, and Chauhn ripped his voice from where it shivered, cowering in his throat.

"NO! Don't! Don't come near me!" he shouted, but Clurie, standing near, couldn't tell if those words were meant for him or the black figures knelt before his Grimm.

They snapped their heads up. Chauhn choked. And Clurie, dumb but knowing full well whose faces stared up at him, felt his gut drop. Those faces were those of the Clemmings, the Clemmings lost and never to return, the Clemmings who haunted Chauhn day and night. But their faces were still strangely and terribly warped, featureless but painted in with poor excuses for eyes and mouths, the broken smiles and bottomless eyes of a Plague shining as bright as the reflected tiles. Their hands were woven together, seemingly one form still, but separated enough to mimic the illusion of six separate forms. Clumsily, they crawled forward, still connected to one another with the weave of their fingers. The bells around their necks giggled softly as they yanked themselves up onto their feet, stumbling into one another, prying themselves apart, and smiling at one another. Six of them, walking together, each shape definite and terrible, smiled with relief upon the knock kneed young Grimm that trembled before them. He didn't move as they drifted forward. He shivered and stared mouth agape, struggling with every inch of his body not to break from the horrible ripping and painful feeling blistering over every inch of his insides. If he moved, Chauhn feared, if he did anything, he would shatter. But he didn't have to worry about falling apart because, in the span of a few moments, the tallest figures, one female and the other male, leaned down to take him into their arms.

Clurie shrieked. Chauhn froze up.

It seemed like many minutes to Chauhn that he lay there in the comforting press of their arms, shivering and threatening to explode into countless fragments, and longer still did it take him to realize that he had welcomed the embrace. He was pressing into them, burying his head into the nooks of their arms and straining with every fiber of his body to believe that the chests that he laid against were filled with beating living hearts. But at the same time, he felt a great and terrible fear welling up, a little voice stapled to the back of his head screaming that this wasn't right. It wasn't real. The voice sounded like Clurie's.

"Oh, Chauhn," the female says, pulling back from Chauhn's nearly desperate clutch to look at him. She pressed her palm against his cheek, holding him and stroking her thumb across the bags of his eyes, "We're so sorry..."

"But what's done is done," the male says, looking back at the other four. He gave a familiar chuckle, a lighthearted but confident laugh. He beckoned the other four towards him, "But the Clemmings are together again, right?"

Two identical forms nodded in unity, not entirely in synch but close enough to make them feel human. They gave bright smiles to Chauhn, their cheeks pressed against one another. "Always!" they said, their separate entities heard in the body of one word. Huddling close by, they grinned at him, gentle like they've always been.

Chauhn lay amid them, the collected forms of his family, and he tried his best to tangle himself into them, hold them close and seek that same comfort he remembered once upon feeling when their hearts were still warm and beating, when their skin was still warm, as warm as the Plague smiles they gave him then. Despite his movements, though, his pathetic reaching and grasping, as if to pull them from the dead and back into his arms, right then and there, Chauhn could faintly hear himself sobbing aloud with distinct and violent horror.

The tall female figure wrapped her hand around Chauhn's, tightening her grip as if to ease his terror with the gentle squeeze of her fingers. She smiled her pearly smile, oozing sympathy as she beckoned him forward into their midst. "Won't you join us?" she asked softly.

Chauhn was trembling, his body giving up, giving way and falling into her as she supported him while his voice ripped out of him in tremulous repetitions of "No, no...No..." He was pale, weakly attempting to pull himself out of their loving holds while, at the same time, he weakly tried to push himself forward. His voice was rising, straining with the strength his body lacked to yank away. Then, before him, pressed a little figure between the others. His hair was a mess of loose curls, black, and his little arms lay outstretched for Chauhn.

"Please, brother," the smallest figure said, toddling forward until he fell against Chauhn's chest, hugging him tightly. He held him for as long as his little strength could squeeze, like a hug given after a great absence. He wrapped his small hand around Chauhn's trembling fist, coaxing him into opening his fingers and squeezing back with bone crushing need. Then, looking up at him with honest eyes, if those vacant and bright twin holes in his face could be honest, he tugged at Chauhn's sleeve. "I've missed you a lot." he said. He punctuated himself with a smile.

Chauhn smiled back in horror.

Together, as one, they pulled him into them, holding him like they once did in one of their weekly trips to the wharf for fresh fish. They walked in the order they once did, Chauhn pressed between the tallest with the smallest tucked around his arm, the other three flanking their sides, and giggling softly with the memories of a joke passed round in the morning. They took a couple steps, long enough for Chauhn to find his feet and walk along with them, before all six husks of the Clemmings slumped forward, their heads falling and cracking to the sides as if their spines had suddenly disappeared within their bodies. They dripped, still smiling at one another, laughing with those voices that Chauhn heard so often in the silence of a passing day, as they melted like candle wax, blackening and bubbling like fat in the fire. One by one, their hands and bodies still pressing or clinging to him, they tripped to the floor, grasping onto Chauhn's arms as if to keep themselves from falling. But, like water thrown from a bucket, they dropped to the floor in a shroud of black liquid, pulling Chauhn with them like he were caught in the undercurrent of a rolling ocean wave, and slowly their forms deflated into shadows. Gasping, sobbing, screaming aloud, Chauhn lay there on the tile, sunk and sticky with black that rung around him as if to mark out the last grave that needed to be dug for the Clemmings.

Alone. He was alone. Just like he was before. He was alone.

.. . . . ..