[PRP] The Golden Morsel [FIN]

[kotaline]

The Golden Morsel

A roleplay involving Wickwright Finch and his Plague, Hopkin, and Adal Malt and his overweening attitude problem.

Having attempted to teleport to Terra, the Council base in Helios, Adal and Wickwright find the process interrupted by Hopkin, who screams in his sleep, and startles them, causing to crash into a building in Aureola instead. For their devastating mishap, Wickwright and Adal are arrested.

The date is February 17th, 1413, and as insult to injury, there is a snowstorm.

 

[kotaline]

Wickwright rubbed his arms gingerly and paced around the small cell they had been held in until the authorities arrived. They had crashed into some kind of important building, and the size of the hole they had made and the state Tristram had been sent into after had ensured that they couldn't make a getaway. Tristram was in custody in a stable somewhere, along with all Wickwright's worldly possessions, but he was stuck in a cell with the surly locos who had introduced them to the wall in the first place, and his damned Plague, who had slept through the entire incident. At least the rest of the cell was empty. With his luck, he wouldn't have been surprised to have ended up sharing it with an amorous Arelgren and Meschke.

"I thought," he said gruffly, "That getting us to Helios wouldn't be a problem. I distinctly remember the suggestion that it would be fine."

In the book bag, a small, tinny voice emerged. "Are we arrived in Helios," it asked, and Wickwright gave the bag a shake.

"Now you wake up!"

"I was attending to grave business," Hopkin explained, and Wickwright snorted.

"We have some grave business of our own. What in the name of truth made you cry out like that?"

"Grave business," Hopkin repeated. "Finch was being attacked-"

"A nightmare," Wickwright finished leadenly, and sat down on the stone floor. "Of course."

The guard that had led them in had gone to get them blankets, a small concession to the weather that Wickwright had demanded, loudly complaining about his old and weary bones. But the guard would be back soon, and he'd want names and stories. Wickwright had begun to devise a plan as soon as they'd been taken, but so far, his plans were scarce on the ground. To think he'd be in the government's custody twice in one year! Grimmship was a task for the young.

At least there would be blankets. He heard the guard's footsteps, and he emerged, with fresh straw to boot. Wickwright took hold of one gratefully, and tried to make as much noise doing so as possible to cover up the faint, anticipated "Take the red one!" that came urgently from his bag.

"A clerk is coming to speak with you, Grimm." the guard informed him. "If your Plague tries anything, you'll both be worse for it." He jerked his head at Adal, and Wickwright coughed to hide the indignant noise from his book bag.  

[Rookeries]

Adal had often heard of the tremendous consequences of teleportation from Council and Fellowship members alike, though the more he heard of the dangers, the less he considered them possible. Everything was going relatively smoothly at the Council base-- they had managed to get a time to leave awfully early in the morning-- until the mysterious Plague stuffed inside of Wickwright's robe, no, book bag, made an inordinately shrill noise in the middle of an already convoluted process, and Adal made a mental miscalculation of their area by approximately five miles due north. Five miles they had the fortune of perhaps traveling by foot on, if the damn ox hadn't gone off without them (blindly, during a snow storm, into some kind of important building).

Adal was already keenly aware of how sensitive his hearing was, but something shouting like that at such close proximity did away both his patience and his endurance, so he scarcely disagreed with the guard when they were taken away. The Locos was nursing a headache at the corner of their holding cell when Wickwright addressed him, and he muttered, "I did as well, until I realized I'd made an awful mistake in trusting your cargo. And in you, for that matter-- just be grateful that we didn't splinter."

Adal pulled the rim of his jacket over his ears upon hearing one such cargo's tinny and insufferable voice again. The amount of cacophonous sound he was subjected to already was making him feel a nausea similar to drunkenness, without all of the initial pleasantry and blissfully ignorant peace. He scoffed at the guard once they arrived and released his jacket so he could hear again, as it seemed something was being addressed at him.

He glared at Wickwright with an irksome frown nonetheless-- when what the guard said finally registered, he furrowed his brows in anger but allowed the guard to dig his own hole. "You'll scarcely have the ability to stop me if I'm alone, human," Adal retorted, "Perhaps I should take my chances, considering how the threat of dying will hang over me either way."  

[kotaline]

"Trust!" laughed Wickwright. "You've hardly trusted me since I intercepted you. Not that I blame you for that, but I assure you that my cargo, as inconvenient as it may be, is far more trustworthy than you and I will ever manage, even if presently we can only trust him to delay us."

As Adal began to pick a fight with the guard, Wickwright rubbed his temples. While it was understandable that the boy was angry, he had no desire to get arrested again before he was even done with this arrest.

"I know enough about your lot to know you're talking up an empty threat," scoffed the guard. "You with the white swirly eyes can only cure the pestilence, and I'm not bad at normal magic, either." He paused, doing a brief mental inventory of his knowledge of Plagues, and, satisfied that he was correct in his estimate, puffed out his chest. "Anyway! Aren't you going to tend to your Grimm? He's an old man, you know!" With that, he turned on his heel and left, and the old man took the opportunity to pull out the book bag hidden in his cloak.

"Well! At least someone knows to respect his elders," Wickwright announced, watching the guard leave. "I wonder if I can convince him to give us a decent meal."

He saw the look on Adal's face and relented. "Come on, Malt, it's not so bad. You've kept your end of the deal-- sort of --, and as a man of good faith and a mendicant, I'll keep mine." He double checked for guards and pulled Hopkin from the book bag. Hopkin immediately clung onto his fingers, and then opened two of them to peer between them at Adal.

"This is my Plague," Wickwright announced. "And the author of the trouble of the day."  

[Rookeries]

Being able to hold a straight expression for an impressive amount of time never quite left Adal after he became an Anhelo. He stared with a want for violence at the guard, and said nothing to prove the man neither right nor wrong; in the end, after their teleportation mishap, Adal wasn't quite confident that he would brave the same thing again at the prison cell.

He turned slowly towards Wickwright and muttered, "My respect for you is in the form of remaining here. What is a Plague to his Grimm, if not loyal?" Adal felt the rough surface of the wall as if to survey its stone and how dense it was-- perhaps he could break through it-- if close teleportation didn't often lead to splintering accidents, Adal would have already grabbed Wickwright by his spry wrist and have chanced a return to Thorn.

Adal realized that surveying the wall was futile soon enough, and went back to staring unimpressed at Wickwright; it took a well of effort to supress a pout, as Adal knew it would only make the man take him even less seriously (which Adal assumed Finch did at least a little of). "Optimism isn't befitting of old men. Or Panymisians of any mysterious denomination. Being behind prison walls like this is what I've been avoiding for over a year-- if we do escape, we're not fetching your ox."

The Locos drooped against the wall complacently anyways as Wickwright settled on taking out his book bag again. Adal was honestly surprised that the man hid it underneath his robes during the teleportation process, though the Locos did find it less cruel than stuffing his Excito directly underneath his clothing. When Hopkin was finally revealed to him, he stared down at the little bronze boy with an expression that was hardly above an intense stare wanton with thoughts of elaborate murder. Adal's expression calmed, though, and he looked at Wickwright in confusion.

"You'll have to reserve your promise for later. If I'm to examine Hopkin thoroughly, I need my equipment," Adal waved his hands around his shoulder and torso, where his satchel hung initially, "And I hadn't thought to wear a robe today to conveniently hide one."

He glanced back at Hopkin anyways, now more intrigued than volatile, "What do you come from? Your clothes look rather flammable."  

[kotaline]

"I assure you we are fetching my ox," Wickwright retorted. "Despite my humble profession, I'm not quite ready to give up all my worldly possessions yet. And you may be able to just vanish into thin air and be done with these men, but I'm too old to be a wanted fugitive. I'm already having difficulty with being a wanted Grimm, by my bones! If we leave, we leave because they let us go--" He grunted, stretching and standing up.

"--I just need to come up with a plan." Tapping his fingers together, he began to pace the cell.

"I am the Book of Traditions. ...What equipment is needed to examine me?" Hopkin asked hesitantly, having retreated back into the book bag. He had been hopeful at the prospect of leaving Tristram behind, having always been on shaky terms with the ox at best, but the fact that the wagon would have to be left behind with him made the situation disagreeable. He distracted himself from the thought, since Wickwright was dealing with it, and turned his attention back to Adal. "Your clothes look flammable also," he pointed out matter-of-factly. "Many clothes are. What are you from?"

Wickwright rolled his eyes, dug his hand into the book bag, and groped around.

"No good," he muttered. "All my quills were broken in the collision. We're going to have to wait for the clerk."  

[Rookeries]

Adal left the old man to his own devices for the time being-- he was pessimistic of the idea that a guard in Helios would let off a Grimm so easily, especially after they'd damaged government property (probably). He stared at Hopkin and hovered his hands over the book bag with the temptation of shaking Hopkin out of it, as Wickwright did earlier, but resisted the urge. Adal scoffed.

"A Book of Traditions isn't any text I know of. Is it Panymisian, or are you far too plain for that?"

Adal rummaged aimlessly through the pockets of his jacket. He narrowed his eyes at the Phasmas' response, but was able to take out and display a small vial-- glowing black and viscous, as many Putesco were-- in quiet triumph. "Are all Phasmas and Quietus Plagues so oblivious? I don't care. Anyways, to examine you, this is what I need-- a vial of Furvus Elixir, but I'm afraid we're missing two key components-- another empty vial and an object smaller than my thumb. We tend to use a small rock."

The Locos turned back around and scraped his hands against the crevasse of the stone wall and floor, and picked out a small pebble covered in rubble. "This will do," he glanced back at Wickwright, "Mister Finch, stop being so unfitting and help me find another container. We aren't escaping anytime soon, and we'll never get out any other way."  

[kotaline]

"I am a book of truth," replied Hopkin simply. "And a plague, and a boy. I do not know that all Phasmas and Quietus are oblivious. I have met only Clurie Not-Clemmings, and he was an unpleasant and far more oblivious Plague than I! He could not even see through the falsehoods of Armaud." Even saying Armaud's name seemed to upset Hopkin considerably, and reminded him that Adal had once worked with her. "You are also oblivious," he said peevishly, "If you think that she speaks any truth."

He dove back into the bag with these words, and Wickwright bristled. "Furvus Elixir. I've heard that name before, in truth. Is that your employer's stock in trade?" He remembered the long March, the liquid Bunting who spoke like Ariadne, and clenched his hand around the strap of the bag lest it quaver at all. "I don't know the components of the brew, though I've seen it. What is that blasted demon's bile, anyway?"

Small hands emerged holding an empty vial of ink, and Hopkin asked, "Like this," always eager to please, even with Adal, who he suspected was either lying or stupid.

"Hopkin, I thought that was full," Wickwright said, grabbing it from him. "There shouldn't be any empty vials in there."

"When we crashed, I thought I had better empty it so it would not spill anything on important documents," Hopkin announced diligently.

"By drinking it?"

"Yes." He had the decency to sound sheepish, at the very least.

"I have an object smaller than your thumb, too, Adal Malt," Hopkin pressed on, ploughing past his moment of weakness. He held out the small down feather of a finch, but Wickwright snatched it away.

"The guard is coming back soon," he insisted. "Malt's foul fiddling can wait."  

[Rookeries]

Adal snapped his attention immediately to Hopkin when he mentioned Clurie Clemmings and Armaud. "Shut up," he snapped, "You barely know anything about the situation, Phasmas. Judging Clurie and Armaud by only the glean of what you know is worse than lying itself."

"You must be a Grimm of a few years, then, since The Furvus Elixir got a bad name from a wrongful trade seasons ago. The Plague Doctor makes the Furvus Elixir as a mock of Putesco's tincture, though it's typically more potent," though Adal seemed to want to say more, he avoided lying about the ingredients of the Furvus Elixir, as he was ignorant of what it was made of himself. The blond remained complacent nonetheless when Hopkin hopped back into the book bag, through his immediate notion was to push the Phasmas back out from his apparent hiding place. Once he came back out with the empty vial of ink, though, the Locos was strangely impressed. He took the empty bottle and glanced at Wickwright as he spoke.

"If your Phasmas is already eating, you'd best prepare to let him do it even moreso if he becomes an Anhelo. They're usually attracted to their food source in the future, though you should be lucky that most Phasmas feed off the tangible."

He took the feather from Hopkin once he found one. Though he already had the pebble in hand, Adal simply discarded it by throwing the thing against the wall. Adal uncorked the bottle of Furvus Elixir and scoffed audibly at Finch without the slightest inclination to do as he said, though he was clearly annoyed when Wickwright snatched the feather away from Hopkin.

"No they're not," Adal retorted, "Sit down and stop straining yourself. It'll add years to your old age." He grabbed another pebble from the wall's edge and handed it to Hopkin anyways, and pointed toward the Furvus Elixir and hoped the Phasmas would understand the instruction, at least, and stared off at the direction of the open corridor in waiting.  

[kotaline]

"If you do not like my answer to your question, you may consult another book," Hopkin replied simply, perhaps less needled by Adal's questioning of his credibility because he was so used to such questioning from Jawbone Men, or perhaps merely finding Adal too unimportant to much care about his opinion of him. "But I question your choice of sources, Adal Malt."

Wickwright eyed Adal with some renewed suspicion, but he had agreed to this process in Auvinus. However, even Doctor Kempe's questioning of Hopkin in Gadu had made him jumpy, and this seemed far more intrusive. Still, there was no wriggling out of it from behind bars, and he had to admit that Adal was right about one thing: They didn't know when they would find a more private spot, or when the clerk that guard had promised them would come. "If we're caught, you'll be the one to lie our way out of that mess." he settled for. "Your explanation tells me very little, though. I was under the impression that the tincture of a putesco was only useful for giving fools plague. Is it so valuable that more than one man in this blasted country would seek to imitate it?" He was interested despite himself. He had thrown his vial of furvus elixir away when it had been presented to him, and the chance it might have been useful still niggled at his conscience.

"If you do it, hurry," Hopkin insisted, alarmed by Wickwright's off the cuff remark to Adal. "We must avoid more lies, even if this homo levis is saying them for us!"  

[Rookeries]

Adal chose on working with Wickwright's conversation than fueling the somewhat impudent dialogue with the Phasmas, who seemed either bored with his skepticism or very much uninterested.

"Fine," he replied. He emerged somewhat victorious in all this, as Adal had assumed that it'd take several hours for him to catch glimpse of the Phasmas and examine him at all. He scoffed, though, at Wickwright's next consideration, "Is it so difficult to guess because you've already a Plague? The few people that initially began trying to replicate the Furvus Elixir did so in order to acquire a Plague. Different purposes wanted different alignments of Plague, of course. Others tried to replicate the putesco to see if you could imbibe them with the ability to heal the Plague, without requiring a sentient LOcos. Simple.

"Take the pebble," Adal insisted to Hopkin afterwards, urging the small rock onto the Phasmas given Wickwright's resigned permission. He set the Furvus Elixir onto the floor in front of Hopkin, though it upset him that he lacked the journal he usually accompanied with. He managed to pull a rather unimpressed scowl at the empty ink vial, too, but he realized it wasn't quite the time be choosy. The Locos stared out at the remainder of the prison hall and began to think in lieu of writing anything down. He was remarkably awake.

"Do you remember when you first recall your book being plagued? I'm to assume that Hopkin has no memories as a putesco."  

[kotaline]

"Not all men yearn for the charming company of your kind, Malt," Wickwright replied loftily. "Although I can certainly see why your master might be willing to try anything to cure the pestilence, with such a Plague at his side to motivate his work." In frankness, it had not crossed Wickwright's mind at all that anyone could want to make a Plague, as Hopkin had been so utterly inconvenient to himself. The Jawbone Men had long ago deemed Plagues to be untruths. There was no value in them except that which Wickwright attempted to impose upon Hopkin, although he supposed that even he could see the value in a Locos. If Hopkin had been of that alignment, his struggle might be considerably less difficult, he reflected bitterly, but then, the struggle might be worth it if all Locos spoke as impudently as Malt did.

"Hopkin remembers the contents of my book," replied Wickwright, needled that this Plague might think that his book was somehow deficient. "And he has, at times, recalled details of my history with that book."

Hopkin squirmed uncomfortably at this. "Those truths are imperfect in my mind," he admitted with frustration. "They vex me, and are difficult to report. But I can remember all of the contents of myself before I was Plagued with perfect clarity." His existence in the wide world was dark and shadowy up until he had awoken as a Plague, but he could at least count upon the True World to be transparently accessible.

"As for his plaguing, it was three years ago. I was doing holy work in plagued communities, and my book was contaminated. He emerged a few months later, in winter," Wickwright finished. "Strewth, the time has passed fair quickly. Do not age, Malt, it's a damnable inconvenience."

Footsteps were coming down the hall, and Hopkin almost dropped his pebble. Wickwright was torn between alarm and smugness at being right, but he stood in front of the door to their cell, barring the interior from being immediately seen.

"It's the guard with the clerk he went to seek," hissed Wickwright, "I knew this was no place for this business. Who conducts experiments in a cell, by the bone?"  

[Rookeries]

"Of course, common men have no use for Plagues," Adal muttered, scowling defiantly at Wickwright, "They lack the resources to do right with us."

Though the apparent dual memories of Hopkin during his Putesco days were indeed intriguing, the three were immediately interrupted by the sound of footsteps down the hall. Adal quickly picked up the now-painted pebble and dropped it into the ink vial, and made sure to quietly stuff it into his jacket pocket before Wickwright ushered himself in front of the prison cell. The Locos admonished the man's chiding with a plaintive frown-- indeed, his expression was growing deeply more dissatisfied since the start of the day-- and scoff.

"It would do you well to rest and not act so spry and dramatic," Adal retorted, "It was a procedure, not a risky experiment. I've already finished what needs to be done." this was a half-truth, as the pebble still required curing. He continued with as soft a whisper as he could muster; "Now, if you're going to act the part of my Grimm, turn around and stop looking a fool."

He lifted up the top of the book bag and stared expectantly at Hopkin. "Don't say a thing. If they call for Wickwright's Plague, it is not you. Understood?"

Plagues were already precious in Helios, the presence of two at once had a tendency to scare Plagueless humans. His relative privilege as a Locos provided them some flexibility, at least, unless anyone here still recognized his face. Given his worn state and deterioration in dress from a Guardsman outfit to rags, he had some healthy confidence that they could travel around the capital unseen.

That was, at least, if they were to be released. Damn that ox.  

[kotaline]

"Yes, well, I was planning on resting before we crashed into a wall and got arrested, but they say only Panyma's plans never go awry," Wickwright retorted drily. "And if I don't look a fool, I don't see how I'm going to convince anybody that I willingly travel with such a whelp of a boykin and his sassy mouth!"

"I do not understand," said Hopkin to Adal from the bag, but at that moment, the door to their cell opened, and Wickwright turned around, his most harmless mendicant smile plastered on his face.

"Wickwright Finch?" asked the clerk, a thin, nervous looking man. "Of Veritas, Helios?"

"I am Wickwright Finch," replied Wickwright, somewhat perplexed by the statement.

"Is this your Plague?"

"Yes," Wickwright said, loudly enough to cover the inevitable muffled "No," from the book bag.

"You are to be remanded into the custody of a Helian authority who has requested your presence," the clerk said. "We have moved your belongings into a space suitable for teleporting you to Aureola. You will remain with this authority until we decide what charges to press you with, and any attempt to escape will be factored into your punishment."

Realization dawned in Wickwright's mind, but he had to make sure of one last thing. "And the ox is coming?" The clerk nodded, and Wickwright broke out into a grin. "Come, my pestilential burden," he called to Adal, "We have an appointment to keep."  

[Rookeries]

Adal shot the clerk an unnerved look while lazily standing up, book bag in to. He managed to flail the book bag around some on his shoulders before innocently offering Wickwright the bag. Like Finch, he was able to recover from his previously sour attitude to a relatively innocuous one.

"Your bag, mister Finch," Adal offered compliantly. While he knew he couldn't kill Wickwright with false sweetness or kindness, Adal hoped the man could read some displeasure from his forced tone.

Adal looked away from the clerk and silently cused about the ox-- he'd hoped the insufferable thing had died from shock by now. He returned Wickwright's grin with an unbearably s**t-eating smile of his own, and bowed for added effect. "Of course, mister Finch," he replied, "We'd best hurry, lest we be late. We mustn't forget your old bones and their needs."

END