Dread and Enmity [ Slave ]

[Blackthorne]

Coruscant
The Undercity

The Wayward Rat - Traveling Black Market Bazaar

It was getting harder and harder to keep business afloat now that the Alliance had come to claim the jewel of the galaxy. Coruscant would never be a clean place, no. Not after so many centuries of dirt would it ever truly be cleansed, but the scrubbing fingers of justice and good were certain to make things difficult for the disease to continue as it had.

The Wayward Rat was the answer to the encroaching bleach of the Alliance forces. A market that moved and scrabbled along the undercity, squeezing through the impossible holes to eek out its life off the dredges of what the upper levels had left behind. Weren't difficult to find, per say, not if you knew the right people to ask the right sort of questions. People that lurked in the corners of the by-ways that the common citizen never traveled. Questions that posed themselves as offers, come-ons. Riddles as answers given for the right pound of flesh. Sometimes living, sometimes willing, othertimes neither of the above.

No one ever said the undercity was a nice place.

She'd been to Coruscant only once before and it had not been for anything remotely relating to why she was here now. Hard to think that long ago, upon a time before the galaxy knew real silence, her family had ruled here. So much for legacies - though she supposed it wasn't such a great loss. The undercity spoke of a festering foundation that slowly collapsed in on itself over the years. No one bothered to fix it for the simple fact that it couldn't be fixed, just like it couldn't be clean. Instead they built empires ontop of the crumbling layers. Generation after generation, faction after faction; the greatest historical layercake of the universe.

Faint purple smoke coiled through her gaze as she stared up through the darkening skies. It wasn't night that approached but the lower levels of the city that rose. She'd never been below the smog, never wondered what sort of realm existed beneath the veil, and here today she would witness it first hand.

But first a ride on public mass-transit. The tramway rumbled in bated silence; a whole car filled with people who refused to talk to one another despite sharing the same recycled air and choking on one another's rot. The young woman watched the ashen faces around her, intrigued in the way they so willingly broke their gaze. Might've been her wardrobe. Might've just been the norm.

Might've been the presence of the Truesword hidden, seething and malevolent, beneath the lengths of her leather trenchcoat.

[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

With every subtle vibration, The Slave slowly stirred from his slumber. A soft groan that broke the silence of the train cart, coaxing a few careless glances at the alabaster stranger before receding back to the sorrowful isolation each of those aboard held. Engines whirred as they sped through neighborhoods and city blocks, all the while The Slave simply rubbed his eyes of any exhaustion that still lay in them; glancing about the area with a bygone expression.

How long had he been on the train? Where was he?

It didn’t matter, he supposed. Where he was being taken would just be another place for him to dig his unruly claws into, gnawing out a wound that festered with his malignant energy. In this, he had his habit, one so malevolent in nature that those who would witness rarely ever existed the same following it. He cut temporary homes into neighborhoods of various types, from the decadent rich to the poverty stricken poor, always leaving blood and death in his wake.

Some saw him as a Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a white horse that ran with the wind and left a trail of destruction behind it. They were only forgiven because he himself did not know what he could do, nor did he understand the endless echo his actions would cause.

Yet, as his eyes adjusted to the somewhat dim light of the tramway carriage he couldn’t help but notice a singular figure emanating a dark energy amidst the center of the grouping. A finger came to stroke his chin as he studied her, watched as her body lurched as the inertia enacted subtle changes in her posture; all to watch as the doors of the tram opened at the market many of those aboard sought.

As she would move, as would he, taking care to hide his presence in the force as he followed; almost entranced by the intoxicating darkness that trailed behind her.

│ @Blackthorne │

 

[Blackthorne]

Hiding.

Not a tactic employed by the woman - call it a hereditary gene. Now blending, that was different. Down here in the dregs of the civilized people she wasn't so much out of place as she was just another faceless vagrant. There were spells taught to her in the wild hours of endless space-night, ways to make the weak of mind look away, to look through you. Seeing yet never registering. This is what she employed today.

The Market began as any other low-level market might. Foodstuffs, trinkets, junk and detritus. Then there came the a bend in the aisles, a turn and a quarter stride. There were powers at work down here best understood only by the Guttermage [member="Trenchcoat Man"] and his horde of junkies. She followed the trail until a lone dark alley presented itself, the end seeming so far away and completely encumbered by a shadow not even her inhuman eyes could see past. The smell was terrible; a heady aroma of rotting flesh and waste - a deterrent for the lost or unwary, but not a side effect.

The woman pressed on, faintly aware of a different sort of shadow trailing on her heels.

 

[Darth Empyrean]

It wasn’t sure if she noticed him, and with a faint distraction overcoming him he let what force potential he had slip. The idea of someone trudging through the darkness of the underworld in hunt of something, especially someone who smelled so fierce, going so far for something only his imagination could fill. Perhaps it was latent drugs in his system, but the curiosity of the entire situation that dragged him along.

Slipping past the crowds, he took care to stay just out of sight of her, but carefully watched as she herself meandered around. She carried herself differently than anyone in the market, more prideful, straighter, there was no mistaking her no matter how subtle she made herself seem in the crowd. Unlike many, she carried an objective; and the focus The Slave held on her in this moment wouldn’t allow her arcane prowess from blurring his attention.

As the roads grew tighter, and the marketplace grew claustrophobic walls; The Slave took care to watch her from a distance as she disappeared into the alley.


│ @Blackthorne │

 

[Blackthorne]

This was an abysmal passage from dark alley into the underbelly of the city planet. A place she'd never ventured before but dare press onward, dismissive of all trepidation. Forward into the blackness that consumed everything entering the alley, permeating the skin and soul of those who deign not turn back. The steps that once echoed off duracrete walls absorbed into the bleak hollow and naught but a strange ambling pathway remained.

Walls dissipated for the crawling sensation of a thousand thousand spatial anomalies. Where an entire world had somehow fit into the crevice of an aged and crumbling wall, settled snugly in the cracks where deathstick smoke seeped. The smell was horrific but even after a time it, too, faded into the far fathoms.

Where you go is in a world beneath worlds, at de edge of edges.

Words spoken by a cutting Voodoo Priestess one late night between rounds of Spice at the Cove.

How do I find the market? Dahl had asked.

For a time you will be lost in da city. You 'ave to be lost te fine a place dat cannot be foun.

Lost on de roads and den lost in de fathoms.

Den when you least expect it, ye slip into His realm, in de place between places.

Whose realm?

She felt the water seep into her boots long before she truly knew she was walking in it, so thick was the veil of the ethereal gutter magicks here.

De Guttermage o' course, ma cher.

Blackthorne stopped as the cold feeling crept up to her calf, saturating the fabric of her pants. When she blinked she was in the belly of a monstrous sewer pipe so large it could swallow a freighter whole with room to spare. It was impossibly dark and in that darkness her own green eyes glowed like angry acid. They narrowed then, skin crawling with the humidity hanging like unseen fog on the air. It felt more like a swamp than a sewer.

"Did you bring your coin for the ferryman..." the woman said to the Shadow on her heel, gaze cutting back over her shoulder where she felt his presence pressing through the miasma.

 

[Darth Empyrean]

As the darkness threatened to consume them both, and the light grew dreary compared to the smell that overtook their every sense, he heard her words call out to him in a faint; almost careless tone. Almost at instinct, he patted his pockets, only to realize that perhaps she was being sarcastic.

He offered a coy response, “No, must’ve left it at home.”

In truth, he had no idea she even knew he had been following her. Perhaps because of the drugs he was still recovering from, and the latent numbness in his spine; there was a quiet disregard for just how well he was holding in his rather malignant energy. One that rolled like a fog, always consuming the area that he dare make path to.

Yet, in the darkness where they stood, it receded just as he made an effort to speak; from the faint trail of smoke that waft off him in the metaphysical sense, now to nothing more than a soft haze one needed to focus on to realize. To most, he wouldn’t even seem to be apart of the force, but there he was, defying the senses most would dedicate themselves to.

A hand moved to scratch at the alabaster hair atop his head as he waited for a response. Be it of the physical kind, or the more social; he would at least be able to respond somewhat quickly.

│ @Blackthorne │

 

[Blackthorne]

"Then I guess that means you'll owe me."

She turned away from the strange man and his curious aura of malice to proceed forward with the task at hand. Let it never be said that she hadn't felt the twinge of darkside rolling off him, spied the strange corona that followed his movements, noted his weird presence through the Force. These things could not escape the notice of someone raised and trained by them, and where others may have concerned themselves with it - the Captain felt right at home.

Voodooienne.

De Ferryman, 'im come for you at the darkest place, glowin' like de moon te show you de way.

But 'im not free.

To 'im you must pay de price of blood and coin.

What good is coin in a realm like that?

Oh child, dere be no depths dat greed does not sink to...

She walked through the waters, following a current that lazily drifted along the pipe. Here the air was still, thick, and hard to breath, but the aroma of death and decay dissipated the further along she went. Soon the current picked up, strong enough to pull at the material on her legs, growing deeper to swallow her at the waist. Then the pipe ended, opening up into an expanse of darkness so profound she'd seen nothing like it anywhere else except the broad, endless fathoms of deep space.

The place where not even distant stars flickered.

There was no true way to tell how deep this strange ocean beneath the city became but her senses told her it wasn't worth testing. Blackthorne reached in to the saturated pocket of her jacket and withdrew two golden Atrisian coins whose historical value likely far exceeded what they would buy today. Maybe.

"Blood..."

No sense in waking the Truesword for such a menial task. The woman lifted her free hand to her lips and bit into the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger, giving the job to her mouthful of serrated fangs. The blood flowed freely and she transferred a coin into that palm where it pooled dark ochre. Both sides coated, she then tossed the coin far out into the bleak, open waters.

Two coins were needed for two travelers, however, and so she pinched the gleaming gold in her fingers and held it out for the stranger to make his own payment.


[member="The Slave"]

 

[Darth Empyrean]

The Slave hesitated, still confused by where all this was taking him. Eventually, only after a moment longer, he took the coins she offered and shrugged. Following her example, he too bit the soft pad of his thumb, letting the blood coat the coins before tossing it towards the water. Action for action, he repeated as she did, and when all was done he stood beside her in a perturbed silenced.

He often got himself into these situations, where he didn’t know what was going to happen, nor what was happening currently; but this was one of the more odd examples of such a streak. Afterall, who ended up waist deep in a sewer bleeding and throwing coins? For a second, he considered how this might just be another bad deathstick trip; but concluded it didn’t actually matter. Either he satiated his curiosity now, or woke up later somewhere else.

Still, the faint beauty this woman carried with her kept him extremely intrigued. Not only in the situation, but how she carried it with little confidence in the matter, almost as though she didn’t know, or care how she looked. Even more of an oddity, is that despite the decadent stance she held, she simply let this stranger of a young man follow her with little to no resistance.

Unless of course she intended to kill him now. That’d be a good twist.

Not exactly the one he wanted however.

│ @Blackthorne │